you

most computers come with either a CD drive or a DVD drive

you may not realize that most computers can also copy files or burn files to CD or
DVD

if your drive is labeled as a DVD RW multi recorder or a CD RW drive

you can use it to burn a CD or a DVD

Windows makes it easy to burn a CD or a DVD

suppose I want to burn all of these files to disk

well, the first thing I want to do is make sure that I've got a writable CD or a
DVD in my drive

after I do that, I just simply select all of the files I want to burn to the disk

I can use my mouse to draw a rectangle around all the files like this

or I can hold down the control key on my keyboard as I select multiple files that I
want to burn

there are many other ways to select files and windows all of which I cover in my
book be the geek

once you've selected the files that you want to burn to disk

click the burn button shown here

if you're using Windows Vista or Windows 7

if you're using Windows XP you'll need to right-click on the files you've selected

point to send to

and then choose your CD or DVD Drive from the menu

I'm going to go ahead and click the burn button

and notice when I do I get this dialog

this is actually the contents of the DVD Drive that's on my computer

and notice that these files that are ready to be written to the disc have a little
downward facing arrow

that means that those files are ready to be written to the disc but they're not
currently on the disc

if I want to go ahead and complete the operation and burn those to my disk I just
click the burn to disk button

and when I do Windows will ask me for a disk title

this disk title is used to add in five the disk by Windows whenever it displays the
contents of the disk
and you can pretty much enter anything that you want here

the recording speed is dictated not only by the drive that's on your computer but
also by the type of media that you have in the disk

so I'm going to go ahead and click Next now and when I do windows will go ahead and
prepare the files and burn those to the drive

and once the files have been successfully written to the disk Windows ejects the
disk automatically

and now I'm ready to share that disk with someone else or store it away someplace
so that I can access the files later

by the way you can also copy a CD or a DVD

by first copying the files on the existing disk to your hard drive

and then burning those files from your hard drive to the other disk

keep in mind however that this won't work for copy protected discs such as movies

copying files to a CD or a DVD is a convenient way to move large files

or a large number of files

between computers or to share a large number of files with friends or family

however CDs and DVDs should not be considered a good choice for backing up files

because they're easily damaged

found out more information in my book be the geek the computer guide for the rest
of us

and find more geek casts at wwbd

geek guy comm thanks for watching