Can't Backup to CD

I haven't been able to backup any OS backup files to a CD!!! I've used several OS's,,ME,XP,2000..And no go on my end and I consider myself pretty educated! :-) Just one of those let-me-dig-a-bit-longer issues!

I just backed up my laptop (important documents and such) to a CD. I don't know if this is an efficient way to do it, but here's how I did it. I used Windows Backup Utility and picked what I wanted to backup (up to the capacity of the CD) and chose my desktop as the destination. Then, once it was "backed up" to my desktop, I copied it to a CD. It's impossible to back up the entire computer to a CD without calculating the MB's of the files and creating multiple back ups to the desktop. I have googled this topic as well without any success. It would be nice to have a program that will backup everything to a CD without going through all the mess. However, my process worked for the few files I wanted to backup.

Do they have the same problem if they try to backup to a CD-RW? Writing a file to a CD-R changes the file attribute to Read Only (since CD-Rs are a "write once" medium), while using a CD-RW would allow the file attribute to remain the same as it originally was. A floppy, being re-writable, also maintains the original file attribute.

From Expert Zone Column - Microsoft's Site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx

... "Unfortunately, the Windows Backup utility can't save files directly to a CD-RW drive. "

Unless you have packet-writing software, the CD must be written to all at once, then finalized. Packet-writing software would allow it to be used as a giant floppy disk.

Note that dragging a file to the CD merely creates a copy on the hard disk. That copied file is then actually written to the CD when you tell XP to do so.

To use Windows backup to a CD, you have to make the CD look like a big floppy. That's what packet-writing software does - you format the CD (typically a CD-RW) with the software, then Windows sees it like a big floppy. The file system the packet-writing software creates is called UDF.

Windows doesn't come with packet-writing software, just packet-reading. If you have Roxio EasyCD or Ahead Nero, you already have packet-writing software. Roxio calls their product DirectCD, while Ahead call theirs In-CD.

Note that this formatting uses about 25% of the space on the CD, so a 740MB CD-RW only ends up with about 550MB usable space. For this reason, both EasyCD and Nero come with stand-alone backup programs. These programs can back up to CD (or DVD) without having to preformat the CD's with UDF.