# CD-R authoring question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cd-r-authoring-question/147839>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 10, 2003, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cd-r-authoring-question/147839 "2003-01-10T22:50:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aoty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@aoty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aoty)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cd-r-authoring-question/147839/1 "2003-01-10T22:50:05Z")

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I have a folder on my harddrive that contains approximately 8 gigs of stuff that I’d like to back up. Instead of manually partioning my data into 650 MB chucks and keeping track of what I’ve burned and what I haven’t… is there a burning program that will automatically segregate the files for a “best fit” and prompt me for a blank CD when needed? I don’t really care which files end up on which CD, as long as they are all archived.

I looked at programs like Norton Ghost, but they back up whole partitions, and they use a non-standard format. When these discs are done, I’d like to be able to read them from the CD without a special program.

Any ideas Dopers?

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**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cd-r-authoring-question/147839/2 "2003-01-10T23:03:03Z")

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I believe I’ve been thinking of posting the same question – 13 gig of randomly sized folders and files to burn to CD. Winzip will span an archive across a set of floppies automatically, but I don’t seem to be able to get it to do the same with CDs. I’m mainly posting here to subscribe to the thread.

If it makes a difference, I just upgraded (so I am not that familiar with the ins and outs) to Win XP.

Thanks to the OP!

Rhythmdvl