Now you are ready to burn a copy of your MP3 files onto a CD. There comes a time when you will not be able to keep all of your MP3 song files on your hard drive due to limited space. This will be the time when you will have to archive your MP3s to CD. This tutorial will walk you through this process.

COLLECT YOUR ALBUM FILES
Collect 650 Mbytes (or less) of albums in a sub-folder. This is the capacity of a CD and the amount that you will burn on each CD. You can find CDs that advertise a capacity of 700 Mbytes but most drives have problems with a capacity over 650 so I always stay away from anything over 650 Mbytes.

Here we will look at Windows Explorer as our collection tool. Windows Explorer is my most used program in my computer. It allows me to see that content of my hard drive and it allows me to move, copy and delete files. In this operation we will us it to do the following:
1. Create a sub-folder to hold our albums
2. Copy our albums into that sub-folder
3. Measure the amount of data in our sub-folder (650 Mb is our limit)
4. Test our CD after it is burned
5. Delete the sub-folder and all contents when we are sure our CD can be read

Step 1. See the image below. In the CDex MP3 creation folder (C:\My Music) create a sub-folder called "CD-One". This is done by "Right Mouse Clicking" on the "My Music" icon and selecting "New Folder" from the pop-up menu. Type the name "CD-One" and your new folder is created in the "My Music" folder.

Step 2. Now copy all of the folders containing your albums into the "CD-One" folder. You can do this by dragging and dropping or by "Right Mouse Clicking" on the album folder and select "Copy" from the pop-up menu then "Right Mouse Clicking" on the "CD-One" folder and select "Paste" from the pop-up menu. Make sure that you do not have any sub folders under the album folders (see below).
Optional: A good ideal is to scan the CD liner notes and place a copy of the image file in your album folder. This will allow you to see the CD Liner at a later date when you listen to the album.

Step 3. After you have copied your album folders into the "CD-One" folder we will need to measure the amount of disk space used by your "CD-One" folder. This is done by "Right Mouse Clicking" on the "CD-One" folder and selecting "Properties" from the pop-up menu. (see below)

BURN CD:
Now you need to insert a blank CD-R into your CD Burner Drive. This should start the create CD application that came with your drive. I will show you how to use "Adaptec Easy CD Creator". I have found this to be the best program for burning CDs. Any CD Burning Program will do what we are going to do. If "Adaptec Easy CD Creator" does not launch automatically then go to the Start button and manually launch the program.

Above is the "Easy CD Creator" greeting menu. Select "DATA CD" and you will get the program option for burning Data CDs. These CD can only be read by a computer or MP3 players that read CD-R disks. Below is the screen that will appear.

In the above screen you will make all preparations for burning a Data CD. Here is what each Window contains.
Window 1: Shows a list of the folders on your hard drive. You can see our "CD-One" folder.
Window 2: Shows the content of the selected folder in Window 1.
Window 3: Shows the folders that will be created on the CD.
Window 4: Shows the content of the selected folder in Window 3.
Take note that at the bottom of this window you can see the amount of free space you have on your CD. More on this later.

Now I want to give you a step by step procedure to follow in burning a Data CD.
1. "Right Mouse Click" on the CD volume name in the upper left corner of Window 3 and select "Properties" from the pop-up menu. Type in a new name for your CD. I choose to name it "Country_Vol_1".
2. Make sure that your folder which contains all of your album sub-folders (CD-One in our example) is selected in Window 1 then in Window 2 "Left Mouse Click" on a clear area and type Control-A on your keyboard. This will select all of the album sub-folders in Window 2.
3. Now left mouse button click on any of the album folders in Window 2 and drag down to Window 4 and release the mouse button. This will place a copy of each album folder on our CD.

Take note that at the bottom of the "Easy CD Creator" window you can tell how much space on the CD you have used and how much you have left to use. I always try to fill up the CD to the maximum but this time I am going the leave 296 MB on the CD blank.
4. With this done and a blank CD in the CD Burner Drive we are ready to create the CD. Now select the "Create CD" button on the Toolbar.

You will get the following dialog box.

Now you will instruct "Easy CD Creator" how to create your CD.
1. Set the speed. I always like to choose the next to the fastest speed.
2. Choose to "Close CD" if you plan on playing the CD in an MP3 Player. You can also choose to leave the CD Open and just close the session. This will allow you to add more Data at a later time. If your CD is full just select "Close CD".
3. Hit OK the create the CD.

Once the CD have been created you will see the following dialog box. Click on the "OK" button and proceed to Step 4 where we will check the CD using "Windows Explorer".

Step 4. Now we need to check our CD and make sure we can read the data before we delete the files from the hard drive. With the our new CD in the CD-ROM drive open "Windows Explorer" and go to the CD-ROM drive on the left window and in the right double click on any song file and make sure it plays in your default MP3 player.

Step 5. If it plays then you are free to delete the "CD Collection Sub-Folder" and all of it's contents. That contents is now on our CD.

This concludes this tutorial, now go back to the CDex Main Page.

Don Walker of Simputer Consulting has graciously given permission for Help2Go to reprint this tutorial.