Any advice: Backing up files to DVD

[luciusad2004]

Hey guys. In the past I've never really felt the need to back up my data, (I know, blasphemy!) but lately my hard drive has been acting funny and I want to back up some of my more important files to DVD just in case my hard drive dies before I get money buy a new drive (or external hdd to keep my everything backed up.)

I don't really know anything about doing this. Do I need special software? Can anyone recommend any free utilities to make this easier? I'm pretty much just going to back up a couple GBs of pictures and some of my music that I only have digital copies of. Maybe some other random but important files.

Anyone know if there are any built in utilities in windows 7 to do this?

Thanks for any advice.

[Trace]

I think you can just drag to the CD drive and it'll keep bugging you that you have files waiting to be written and it will write them for you.

Read my sig, it explains that if someone smarter comes along, and says I made a mistake, I probably did.

[farlo]

i use imgburn: http://www.imgburn.com/ for all my backups. freeware, made by the same guy that made dvd decrypter.

[Luke122]

If you just need data backups, you can just drag the data you want into a dvd burning app, such as Nero or Roxio (gag).

If you need system state backups, and/or bare metal recovery ability.. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/security-backup,review-1018-5.html

[luciusad2004]

If you just need data backups, you can just drag the data you want into a dvd burning app, such as Nero or Roxio (gag).

If you need system state backups, and/or bare metal recovery ability.. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/security-backup,review-1018-5.html

Data backups is really all I was looking to do.
I suppose a full system backup wouldn't be bad, I just never really knew anything about doing that kinda stuff.

[mDust]

Read my sig, it explains that if someone smarter comes along, and says I made a mistake, I probably did.ROFL. No mistakes made...yet...:devious:

For data, no special software is needed to muck up the process. It's very easy to just drop the files either on the disk icon or into the opened disk's window. When it's full just click burn. Simple.
I cannot stress enough to not use DVDs to backup your entire system...you'll see if you try!:)

[Zephik]

Also, check out Dropbox.

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21341

Its basically a virtual thumb drive that you can access from any PC, Macintosh and even some mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. Well, so long as you have an internet connection anyways. But the great thing is that you'll never lose it and data loss is pretty rare. Its a great idea, I can see why Google wants to do their entire OS basically like this. Although I'd rather have it not solely like that, just have automatic backups or something. That way you can use it both online and offline. Anyways, that got kinda off topic. lol

Pro-Tip: Don't buy cheap discs. Just wasted money. Get like Verbatim or something.

[luciusad2004]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll probab try the drag and drop method next time I have a few hours to waste.