# Backing up to CD-R drives **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 28, 2003, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208 "2003-08-28T15:26:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lord\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecccb3/32.png) [@Lord\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2003, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208/1 "2003-08-28T15:26:37Z")
Does anyone know of a good backup program to a CD Burner? There seem to be a lot out there that use DirectCD or other Packet writing software. I don’t like these solutions, though I’ve used them, because you have to format each CD. This, to me, goes back to the diskette days before you bought them already formatted. I’ve spent many hours formatting diskettes. And it adds a lot of steps to writing a CD also. Let me know if you know of a good backup program that doesn’t use Packet Writing. I’d prefer free, but I don’t mind paying for it if it works good and is resonable. Thanks ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208/2 "2003-08-28T21:53:11Z")
Nero has a HD backup option on the menu. I think 5.5+ or better should have it. 6 needs a patch, so don’t need that one. Nero comes with all the cdrom writers I bought so far. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecccb3/32.png) [@Lord\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2003, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208/3 "2003-08-28T22:35:49Z")
Thanks, Handy. But the Nero HD backup is a disk image, sector by sector backup, not a file backup. That means you restore the whole disk because you can’t pull just certain files off the backup. ---
**Author:** ![biqu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@biqu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biqu)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2003, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208/4 "2003-08-28T23:31:34Z")
If you can make space for a small GNU/Linux partition (omitting the X/KDE/GNOME behemoths), you can install [Mondo rescue](http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/), which supports most common filesystems and, more importantly in your case, interactive restoration, where you can choose to restore individual files rather than whole disks/partitions. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecccb3/32.png) [@Lord\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2003, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208/5 "2003-08-29T01:46:29Z")
Thanks, but running Linux to back up my Windows system wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. “Zipbkup to CD 3.0” has the idea. It creates a standard zip file then copies it to CD. Trouble is that it’s in Beta and so buggy that on my system it has never been able to write anything to CD at all, but it refuses to give up. There has to be something out there. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2003, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/backing-up-to-cd-r-drives/198208/6 "2003-08-29T14:23:39Z")
With nero you can select what directories you want to backup & save that menu. [download.com](http://download.com) might have some other programs.