Recently, I've been wanting to backup my ripped CD collection to DVD because I believe that any data you don't have at least two copies of, you don't really care about... and I care about my CD collection alot.

Anyway, is there a simple way to backup large amounts of rips (which could span over tens of DVDs), rather than manually checking the size of and arranging multiple folders to fit them onto a single DVD?

Basically what I'm in need of, is a program that can backup multiple folders to a single DVD -- without me having the constantly select and arrange which folders can fit on a single DVD, and hopefully without spanning a single folders contents over 2 DVDs (ie. If one folder on a DVD is slightly too large, I wouldn't want half it's contest to be on DVD 1 and the other half to be on DVD 2)

Well, I understand that I may be requesting a fair bit, but the task of manually backing up my collection to DVD is somewhat daunting and far too time consuming. So, even if a program doesn't have that last feature (spanning folders contents), it would still be fantastically time saving.

Any assistance is much appreciated. Thanks.

Back up software (usually not free) can do that for you. The same type of software could be used to back it up on external hard drive. That would be a better choice in most cases (unless your collection is really small.)

I use Windows Live OneCare for back ups.

Thanks for the reply Light-Fire, but I currently have my ripped collection stored on an external HDD because I'm hoping they will live longer than my internal ones as they're rarely powered up. So now I'm just wanting to duplicate my collection to DVDs with as little hassle and time consumption as possible.

I had bad experiences with optical media for back up after 3 to 4 years (CD-R's in this case.) If you really want an extra back up why not another HDD?

Ooh. Here we go again. Where's greynol when you need him?!

IMHO it makes a lot of sense to back up to different media, I also back-up to DVD and hard drive. The OP is looking for software, not a DVD vs hard drive thread - of which there are already very many.

I have heard of applications that will intelligently allocate files to a certain disc size, but don't use one and cannot name names. Until someone else comes along you may want to try search the board with a few choice keywords - I know there's some info on here somewhere (possibly pertaining to CD rather than DVD). Sorry I can't be any help.

NB: Any further hard drive vs optical media posts will be deleted.

[fun_mode] HDD is better [/fun_mode]

Now seriously, I know of two programs that do that: Burn To The Brim and CDCreator which I downloaded in pack with some nfo builders. Try these. I used CDCreator and I like it.

Ooh, you are so lucky that you had a good answer...

Yeah, I think Burn To The Brim is the one I was thinking of. I may take a look at CD Creator.

I also suggest you to take a look on Size Me which I tend to prefer to burn to the brim. But I suspect its algorithm to be less efficient to the latter.

Size Me looks very nice. I've looked at both that and CD Creator, and I much prefer Size Me for usability.

I haven't checked Burn To The Brim.

That's the one that came to mind for me, too. Development, however, seems to have stalled 3+ years ago and it likely isn't the best choice any longer.

Glad you got my attention 'cause I probably would have passed this up thinking, "oh no, not another another one of those discussions." I'll have to check those programs out next time I burn another batch of DVDs to replace the ones I have before the dye deteriorates. Yes, reading those "other" threads has gotten me a bit paranoid.

Thanks for the information, everyone!

Thanks, I'll have to check it out further, but it looks like I can create an ISO with a custom size and then use Dvdisaster to add RS02 error correction. I like getting multiple discs from one directory. No more doing them one disc at a time and hoping I don't get too many duplicates.

J

Thank you very much for the suggestions everyone.

BTTB doesn't appear to support DVD media and as for CDCreator, I couldn't quite get it to do what I wanted. But I think that SizeMe will be as close as possible to what I'm in need of.

I gave SizeMe a quick test-run and it seems great. Although, the ordering of album folders is not spanned alphabetically over the number of DVDs. Rather, a DVD is made up of any folders which will fill the DVD as much as possible, and that would make it alot harder if you have to look for a single album folder.

The only solution that I can think of to my little problem, is keeping some kind of catalogue or record on my PC of the DVD folder/directory listings using something like JR Directory Printer, and clean it up with a simple text editor with a replace function. It doesn't seem like an overly great method, but I really don't feel like paying for a CD catalogue application -- I wasn't able to find any free ones. Just thought I'd post that part in case it helped anyone else.

Anyway, thanks again for the assistance all, it has helped me a huge amount.

According to the changelog BTTB does support DVD. I had to create a new profile with CD Creator to bump up to DVD size.

I have used the free Offline CD Browser before. If you search this board for that name you will probably find other threads where such apps have been discussed.

Edit: That said, I would expect that you could get all the necessary info (artist, album, disc number) into a spreadsheet pretty painlessly. I would probably go down that route. FYI: When I rip I add such information to a CVS file that gets added to every disc. The CVS is updated automatically as part of the ripping process, and then I just have to manually jiggle the disc numbers a bit when I actually go to fill a disc. I'm on disc 46 now, and the CVS will easily tell me on which disc an album is.

Ahh, yes. I see the 'Add new CD/medium' function now. But it does the same thing that I mentioned SizeMe does -- Nothing that can't be tolerated or worked around though.



Thank you Synthetic Soul, that app looks great, and I'll keep searching the board for others.

I hope this helps: http://www.tjelinek.com/main.php?section=d&setLng=EN

Have you tried Cathy? It's one of my indispensable tools.

Have a look at VisualCD. (http://boozet.xepher.net)

Thank you, I'll take a look at that app.



"This account has been temporarily disabled!" Oh well, thanks for the reply.