Tutorial: How to Burn a CD

Thursday, 21 October 2010 15:31 Written by Tony Bollman

There are many programs that one can use to burn data to a CD or DVD, but here at MPA computers, we recommend BurnAware Free. You may already have this program, as we install it on many systems that have been in our workshop, but if not, you can get a copy of BurnAware Free quickly and easily, here, and best of all, the free version is, you guessed it, free! This and other burning software are capable of burning many different types of files onto both CD's and DVD's, the focus of this tutorial will be on burning a data CD. Why burn data onto a CD? There are several good reasons: burning data onto a CD is a good way to keep files such as photos or music on a safe storage media without taking up extra space on your computer's hard drive. Burning data onto a CD is also an effective way to back up files you don't want lost, and is more reliable than storing them on a portable flash drive, which is another reason to burn data onto a CD, portability!

So, let's get started. To burn your data CD just follow these simple steps:

Step 1

Once BurnAware Free has been installed on your computer, run the program. When the program starts, you'll be brought to the main menu. As you will see, there are four rows, each for a different type of burning project. What we will be looking at is our choices in the top row, specifically the first choice: burn data CD (As shown in the picture below).

Step 2

Once you have clicked on the appropriate icon, you will be brought to a new menu. This menu is where you select which files you would like to be burnt onto your blank CD-R. Simply click the blue text that reads "click here to add files" and then select the files you want from the proper directories. When finished, it will show a list of all the files you have selected to be put on your CD-R. You're now ready to burn!

Step 3

Click the large red icon in the bottom right corner that says "burn". At this point if you have not yet inserted a blank CD-R into your computer, it will prompt you to do so (it may even open your disc drive automatically). The program will automatically start burning the selected files to your blank CD-R until burning is complete, at which point the disk drive will eject the CD with your files safely stored on it. Congratulations, you have just burnt a CD using BurnAware Free!