Backup to CD: how to backup properly

If you have a large set of files to backup, which may fit on several CDs (within a dozen), you may well be wanting to backup to CD. It may be worthwhile to organize one's data before a backup to CD to make it easier to navigate through the backups later.

Good quality media

When backing up to CD, it is important to have good quality media. Good media quality pays when one needs to write and restore discs. It also grants one assuredness that the backup will be done successfully.

Marking the discs

The very first thing to be done when backing up to CD, is to number the discs to distinguish them from one another by a marker, a sticker or something equally useful for such purpose. This will be useful when restoring files - a backup program usually asks for a numbered CD when restoring. Writing a short description on each disc or the whole backup set may also be useful.

Checking the discs

The next step is to check whether the discs can be written to. It is no problem with a blank CD-R disc, but what if a CD-R disc was used for writing? Can it be continued by writing another session on it? Brand new CD-RWs need to be formatted before use. Usually a backup program has this option.

The backup itself

The final step is, of course, the backup itself. Everything is pretty simple here: one either just writes the data to discs manually using Windows Explorer (though this may be inconvenient), or uses a backup program, which also can compress and(or) encrypt files with a password. In both cases, one just needs to swap the CDs when one is full. A backup program prompts for this automatically.

Verify backups

After a backup is completed, one needs to verify that the data has been written successfully either manually, by copying several files back, or by using a backup program.