Windows 7 – How to burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs
Posted on November 13, 2009 at 5:41 am
Windows 7 comes with it’s own Explorer integrated CD/DVD burner. We have shown you before how to create DVD movies using Windows 7 movie maker, but this time we will look at it’s capability to burn generic files. Creating data discs in Windows 7 is very intuitive.
Pop-in a blank DVD or CD and it will automatically prompt you with the “burn a disc” window. The default disc title appears as the current date and you will have two options to choose from – like a USB flash drive or with a CD/DVD player.
The “like a USB flash drive” option is the live file system format and is often more convenient because you can copy selected files immediately and as often as you want, just like you can with a USB stick. Alternatively, Live File System discs can’t be used in all computers or in all CD, DVD, or Blu-ray Disc player.
The “with a CD/DVD player” option is the master burning type which is more compatible with other computers and consumer electronic devices, such as CD players, DVD players, and Blu-ray Disc players. Choose which option is suitable for your need then click next.
To start adding files to the disc, drag the files and folders to the drive. I usually watch the size of the files I am dragging to the disc to avoid “not enough space” problems during the actual burning process. If your files are more than 700 MB and less than 4.7GB, get a blank DVD disc. If you need to burn files more than 4.7Gb, you might need to get a Blu-ray disc which supports up to 50GB of total size.
A balloon reminder will show that you have a bunch of files waiting to be burned to a disc. Click this balloon or the disc drive to begin the burning process.
Click the Burn to disc button to start burning.
It will prompt for the disc title and recording speed – I usually set the recording speed to the lowest speed to ensure the maximum quality of the burned data.
If your disc’s capacity is less than the total amount of space that you need to burn, delete a file or files to meet the capacity limit then click choose “try again to burn disc now”:
It will then start to burn the disc. Do not eject the disc or turn off your computer while this is ongoing, otherwise you will corrupt the burning process. In my Samsung drive, it takes about 18 minutes to burn a DVD-R in 4X speed.
I hope this guide helps you burn data discs easily in Windows 7. It is not as robust as the commercial disc burning apps like Nero Burning ROM but for quick and basic disc burning, this does the job well.
Ben Carigtan shows you how it’s done.
» Filed Under Windows 7
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Hi.
Very good “hot to” here. I’m getting an external blu-ray burner for my new Windows 7 laptop, and this is great using just the native Blu-Ray burning capabilities of Windows7.
Good one.
If you are interested in or already have Windows 7 then it is worth reading this very comprehensive post for just about everything to do with installation/customization/information/tips & more:
http://ninjarabbits.blogspot.com/2009/11/hopefully-very-comprehensive-guide-to.html
Stupid question, but if you choose “Like a USB flash drive”, you need to have a rewritable disc correct? It won’t work with a normal CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc? Thanks.
I tried buring files to 2 cd-rw’s. The first one took about 8 minutes to format, and when it was done there was a message that said it could not format the disk. The second one took less time but ended up with the same message. I put each disk in the tray to see if the window popped up (like when you put in a flash drive, etc.), but nothing happened. The drive kept searching and searching, until I opened it and removed the disk. Now I don’t know if these disks are damaged or not. I just got this Compaq Presario with Windows 7. Does anyone have any help or suggestions?
I never used the built-in CD/DVD burner program in Windows XP because it sucked, but I am giving the new Windows 7 version a try. So far it’s burned a couple of CDs and DVDs without a problem. Fingers crossed.
I am desperately searching for a way to burn my photos and the captions/titles I have already typed under each one to DVDs. I have seen programs where you can add captions/titles after the photo has been moved into the program. I have over 30,000 photos with date, names of the people, occasion/place ALREADY TYPED under each picture.
Is there such a program? Where can I secure it? Please help me.
1) Большое Вам спасибо! Все доступно и понятно для неопытных пользователей! Есть же умные и добрые люди на свете!
2) Если можно – такой вопрос. Вы показали и рассказали как записывать на чистый диск. А если диск нечистый – там уже что-то есть и я хочу еще дописать. Как в этом случае работать?
Всего вам хорошего!
Игорь
With my upgrade to Windows 7 I lost the software that I had been using to burn cds and dvds. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to copy a data dvd (I want to make a copy for someone else, weeks after I previously burned the dvd). Any ideas?
To Shirley,
Would suggest you look into getting Photoshop Elements and then see if there is a local school that offers a beginning class in Photoshop Elements. I did and was thrilled that I had! It will allow you to totally manage all of your photos.
I lost the windows 7 software that I had been using to burn CDs and DVDs. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to copy a data DVD (I want to make a copy for someone else, weeks after I previously burned the DVD).
Any ideas?