How to copy CD

If this is against the rules, feel free to delete. I'm trying to make a copy of a CD with programs incl Powerpoint. When I bought it (2 CDs) a couple of years ago I made backup copies of both but have managed to loose one of them. I'd feel happier replacing the lost copy. I still have the original CD including the product key but it won't work for me - using Nero. Since I had no problem making the copies when I purchased it originally, I don't understand why I can't do it now. I upgraded to XP since that purchase and wonder could that be the reason. Any advice would be appreciated. Obviously I'm not one of the 80% who I read on AAM can copy anything! Incidentally, the copy is for my own benefit only.

I've tried copying to hard drive and then to blank CD but though the original CD is only ~ 530MB, after copying to the hard disc it has increased to 1085MB and so won't fit on the blank CD. It's annoying me that I can't do it.

Hi sherib,

sherib said:

I still have the original CD including the product key but it won't work for me - using Nero.

Click to expand...

Is it just this disk? If Nero is copying other disks OK, it's possible the original CD might be scratched or otherwise damaged...?

Also, if if I may? — when you talk about "copying to hard drive and then to blank CD", what do you mean? Are you using Nero to burn an image file to the hard drive , or are you just selecting-and-dragging the files and folders over in Windows Explorer? (because the latter is not recommended!)

Have you tried extracting the contents of the CD as an ISO image and then writing this as an ISO image (not as a file) to the CD-R[W]?

Thanks DrM and CM but I'm getting nowhere slowly.... it's time to take a break. I think I figured out how to access the data as ISO files using Nero - seems to be like a photgraph? Thought it was working but found I copied the wrong file from the hard drive! What I don't know how to is:

Originally posted by ClubMan
Have you tried extracting the contents of the CD as an ISO image

Click to expand...

Is there a simple way to do that? The Q seems to be how to transfer/copy the original CD data to the hard drive. If I could do that I might be able to then copy as ISO file to the blank CD with Nero 6. I'm a bit thick about this as I don't do a lot of copying. I'm even more annoyed with myself now There are ten folders and sixteen files which should fit on a CD but don't and I noticed if I excluded some or all of the folders, it is possible to copy the files to the CDRW. That's a fall back position but I'd really prefer to copy the lot. Someone should write a book "Copying for Idiots" - or maybe there wouldn't be a market

An ISO image is simply a raw image copy of the contents of the CD. Nothing to do with photos so I don't know where that's coming from. Personally I find the likes of Nero and Roxio to be too heavyweight and confusing to use with lots of features that I don't need. So I'd be more inclined to use Burnatonce to extract the ISO image and then write it (as an image and not a file!!!) to the new CD-R[W]. However Nero should have similar features to extract the contents of a CD to an ISO image and to write this image to another CD-R[W]. I'm just not familiar with Nero these days. You might find something useful among .

I don't use Nero myself, but somewhere in the startup "wizard" there should be an option to simply copy/backup an entire disk? At least that's what's suggested by this handy [broken link removed] (not just for "dummies"!) By the way, you should use a blank CD-R (recordable) for this, not a CD-RW (rewriteable).

DrMoriarty said:

By the way, you should use a blank CD-R (recordable) for this, not a CD-RW (rewriteable).

Click to expand...

I don't understand - why?

I haven't used Nero, I have Roxio easy cd creator that came with my laptop - one of the options is make an "exact copy of this disc" - I've also used another program that had the exact same option but can't remember what it is called, but in my opinion its the best way to do what you are trying

ClubMan said:

I don't understand - why?

Click to expand...

Well, partly just for simple cost reasons - if you just want a backup of various installation files, why not use a 50c CD-R instead of a €3/€4/€5 CD-RW? Also because many CD-burning programs will try to make a CD-RW disk UDF-compatible (so it can be read by older, read-only drives and/or so that files can be simply dragged-and-dropped in Windows Explorer) — this uses up some of the disk's original 650Mb/700Mb capacity. The Roxio product, for example, leaves only 534Mb of free space on a 700Mb disk. If Sherib's CD contains 530Mb of data (and there may be more, hidden files "invisible" in Explorer), then that's getting close to over-filling the disk and possibly creating errors. I've made a couple of CD-RWs "unrecoverable" by trying to squeeze too much onto them...

I would use a CD-RW to experiment until the CD image copying worked and then use a CD-R to burn the final copy. I've never had problems with CD-RWs in recent years in particular the capacity issue that you mention (e.g. I regularly burn updates of Kanotix or Knoppix to CD-RWs with no problems and these are generally hitting the 700MB+ limit on capacity of a CD-R[W]).

What burning software are you using? I know Roxio is a bit of a dog, but it's part of the standard installation on my work PC (the home one has a DVD burner, so no such space worries). The work files I back up weekly now run to 5 or 6 CD-RWs, which is a bit tedious...

Roxio at work, Burnatonce at home and sometimes the XP built in capabilities in both locations.

And do you not find that Roxio's DirectCD feature 'robs' quite a bit of the free space? Here's what I see for a 650Mb CD-RW (not 700Mb as stated above, sorry!):

[broken link removed]

DrMoriarty said:

And do you not find that Roxio's DirectCD feature 'robs' quite a bit of the free space? Here's what I see for a 650Mb CD-RW (not 700Mb as stated above, sorry!):

[broken link removed]

Click to expand...

No - never saw that. And, as I said, I have used it to burn CDs of Knoppix and Kanotix which hit the 700MB storage limit. I download and burn these as ISO images and not as file sets in case that makes any difference.

ClubMan said:

I download and burn these as ISO images and not as file sets in case that makes any difference.

Click to expand...

Maybe that's it. My work backups are basically folders full of Word/Powerpoint/Outlook, etc. files. I could switch off the DirectCD feature, I suppose...

Or perhaps create an ISO image of the files on disk first and then burn that and see if you "lose" less space due to overhead?

Re: How to copy CD - success!

Just to let all you helpful people know that I've succeeded in copying the data CD - after a lot of trial and error. I tried to do that 'image' (photo/image!) method but couldn't. Used burnatonce but couldn't find the image to record after saving to HD. Anyway..., success was achieved by using a completely new CD - it worked for both CDRW and for a CDR. The size remained the same - 530MB. Previously it didn't copy because the copy seemed to take up a lot more space on the previously used CDRW (even tho' erased) - up to 1000MB. So, I'm thinking maybe there was hidden data on the other used CDRWs which couldn't be erased and so limited the available size? That's the only explanation I can think of.

I agree, I found Roxio EasyCD Creator very simple to use but it doesn't work with XP - wouldn't instal when I loaded the original disk. BTW, DrM, I wasn't able to use drag and drop from W Exp anyway! but thanks for that info. I did a trial copy run with a new CDRW (a la CM) and then for the final copy used a CDR. At least I can't ever erase that by mistake.......I hope. Thanks for all the suggestions

Good to hear that you got sorted in the end.