CDRLabs.com

Maybe this is not the correct site for me but maybe someone could help point me in the right direction. I am just getting into backing up CDs and was looking for a site which would provide beginners like me a glossary of terms, tutorials on the basics, etc. This site appears to be more for the advanced user as I could not find such articles here, maybe I missed them. Could someone please steer me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

GN,

I would suspect that it is a characteristic of most sites that they appear too technical for newbies. However, I know of none that specialize in backup techniques.

That being written, let's give it a go here. Tell me what kind of computer hardware you have and what kind of software have in the way of operating system, utilities and backup applications : Windows? Ghost? Drive Magic? BackUp My PC? Partition Magic?

Also, what kind of things are you going to be backing up? OS and registry? Applications? Data (like photos and music)?

Are you considering complete backups only or complete followed by incremental?

If you want to do complete backups, do you want to prepare for complete disaster recovery and restore in the event of a total crash or BSOD?

Now that doesn't look too daunting, does it?

Slim
Who is just here to please.

Cowboyslim thank you very much for the reply. I probably did not explain myself properly but I am mainly interested in backing up personal music CDs, but now that you mention backups in general, and I am glad you did, I would like to know a few things about that as well. I just purchased Norton Ghost. If you can give me a quick tutorial on how to do a complete hard drive back up minus windows os (I want to install a new fresh, raw windows application) that would be great, the Ghost manual is about 1 inch thick and way over my head. Here is my set up:

Windows XP Home
Athlon 2600XP Processor
Asus MB
512K DDR 3200PC Ram
80G 7200RPM HD
Pioneer 105 DVD ROM
Plextor PX708A DVD Writer
Nivida Video Card
Sound Blaster 5.1 Card
Comcast Cable ISP

Thanks very much for your advice.

GN,

About the CD-Audio copies first. It's getting late and I'll deal with the other tomorrow. But don't look to much from me on Ghost. I tried it once and the burn really didn't go well. However, their screens are somewhat intuitive and a lot less intimidating than their overstuffed manual.

Anyway about the music. You didn't mention which app, Nero, Easy CD, or??? I use both Nero and MusicMatch Jukebox with good results. Best thing is to avoid a disc-to-disc or "on the fly" copy. D to D are quicker for one copy, don't require extra hard drive space but can introduce errors, clicks and such. I prefer to do an "image" copy or "rip" the Audio CD to make an image on the hard drive and then burn the copy in a subsequent step. Now that takes longer, but if you want to do two or more copies its just as quick or quicker as you only read once. When you select the "Copy a CD" option in Nero, it gives the copy on the fly option as "Quick Copy" if you don't check it you get an image copy.

I burned a couple earlier tonight with Nero. Actually, I ripped two CDs onto the hard drive in MP3 format and then burned back out onto a single blank CD. Gotta' go listen to it now.

Later,
Slim

Slim, thank you, I am planning on using EAC for ripping and Nero for burning once I figure out how to use both. Happy listening........

sounds like you're on the right track with EAC & Nero.

Play around with it, test out a few cheap CD-R's, and you'll be a pro in no time.

You can also use Nero tools like CDSpeed and/or K-probe to verify the integrity of the CD's you burn. That's more advanced and for later.

UALOneKPlus thank you for the advice.

GN,

For what you want to do now, I wouldn't get involved with Ghost. I'd collect all the data (mp3s, photos, Word and Excel docs, etc) that you want to retain unaffected after the install and put them in appropriate folders. Then use Nero to burn them out to CD-Rs. You don't need to save any apps like MS Word, Nero, etc., as you'll have to reinstall them after you do a fresh install of Windows.

Now, when you do the fresh Windows install, I believe that the Windows install CD will give you the option of creating more than one "partition". I have more than one partition. The first partition is a "physical", bootable partition to which Windows is installed and mine is 10.006GB, NTFS formatted. It will be known as the "C" drive. I then load all my apps, MS Office, Nero, etc. into that drive.

My second partition is known as a logical partition and that is where I put all my mp3s, photos and other documents. For you it would be about 70GB and be shown as "D", "E" or "F", if you only have two partitions total and depending on how the OS assigns drive letter designations.

Later,
Slim

Thanks for the help Slim, have a great evening.

GolfNut