Burning a CD or DVD is rather easy to do but may be complicated for inexperienced users. The first thing the user needs to do is purchase RW disks that can hold as much information is as needed. The user should make sure that the disks are CD-RW and not CD-R, as RW disks can be rewritten many times while R disks can only be written to once and if the user does not perform a proper burn, the disk becomes worthless. The next step is to download and install a good CD burning software. There are a multitude of CD burning programs available for download from the internet.

Nero Lite

Nero is an extremely popular disk burning software that is capable burning both CDs and DVDs in a matter of minutes. While Nero is an expensive software, Nero Lite is completely free to use by anyone. The latest version of Nero Lite is Nero BurnLite 10. The software is capable of burning both CDs and DVDs and extracting information from both types of disks. Nero BurnLite 10 is very easy to use, can make copies of disk information, and can even create disk images in both .iso and .nrg file formats. Nero BurnLite 10 is free and can be downloaded from http://www.nero.com/eng/downloads-nbl-free.php .

Roxio Creator 2011

Roxio is a commercial-grade CD and DVD burner that includes many different features. For example, the software allows users to edit videos, create 3D DVD movies, edit photos, create cards, calenders, and slideshows, extract files from disks and convert them into virtually any common file format, burn CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray disks, and upload disk files to social networking websites, YouTube, or a portable device. Roxio Creator 2011 costs $79.00 to purchase and can be downloaded from http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/creator/suite/overview.html .

Alcohol 120%
Alcohol 120% is a powerful and popular CD and DVD burning software that is available for all Windows Operating Systems including Windows Vista and Windows 7. The software is capable of burning and ripping files from and to disks and can also backup disks as disk images that can be mounted on any one of 31 virtual drives that come with the program. Disk backups are great because they can be used in the same manner as regular disks and can even be copied over to new disk if the hard copy is ever broken. Alcohol 120% can be tried for free or purchased for $55.00. The software can be found at http://www.alcohol-soft.com/ .

ImgBurn
ImgBurn is a very common, free burning software that is used by millions of users worldwide to burn CDs and DVDs. The software does not include features to extract information from disks but can burn them in a matter of minutes. The software is very easy to use as it only needs to recognize that a blank disk is in the disk tray to allow the user to burn a CD. ImgBurn supports BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG, PDI, AAC, APE, FLAC, MP4, MP3, M4A, MPC, OGG, PCM, WAV, WMA, and WV file formats. The software is free and can be downloaded from http://www.imgburn.com/ .

FinalBurner Free
FinalBurner Free is a free CD/DVD burning software that is capable of both burning and ripping CDs and DVDs. FinalBurner Free has an interface that is easy to use for both novices and experts, does not include any unnecessary features, and is only 4 MB in size. Tasks can be saved as projects and users have control over virtually everything that the software does including its writing speed. In addition to burning and ripping disks, FinalBurner Free is also capable of creating ISO files. FinalBurner Free is available for download at http://www.protectedsoft.com/descr_fb.php .