I have some data CDs I wanna make copies of. What should I do:

a. Use a specialized CD copy program like CloneCD?

or

b. Copy the contents of the CD on my HD and burn with Nero?

If the cd has no copy-protection copying to HD is just as good.
If the cd has no copy-protection and you want to make a backup with clonecd make sure that you use the data-mode (should be the same as copying to HD)!

If the cd has copy-protection clonecd is of course the way to go.

You can use Clony XXL for detecting the copy-protection (if there's any).
If your CD has a copy-protection, you can use Alcohol, CloneCD, BlindWrite, Discjuggler, Nero or whatever you may need. Have a look at CDFreaks.com and a look at their forum for further information about copy-protection and about burning those CDs.

The CDs I want to copy are plain unprotected data CDs.

I have Clony XXL. In the last version they removed the CloneCD support,
but u can always use Profiler to pass the parametres to CloneCD.

If Clony XXL tells u what protection there is on a CD, can u use this
information with Nero?

No, nero is no good for copying protected cds.

BTW, I've been able to rip protected CDs with Plextools as if the protection didn't exist,
with no special settings or anything...

Irrelevant question for Jan S.:

Will u ever get round to making an uninstaller for Audioicon Pack?
(I find the idea of having different icons for different formats cool,
provided that the icons are pretty, and that the file associations
stay intact...)

Probably...but I'm busy with school and another far more interesting project so don't count on it being any time soon.

BTW, what's the biggest capacity (mins/MB) of CD-R
that I can burn with my Plexwriter 48/24/48?

95 minutes... (Last time I checked...)

I have a problem:

I have a avi video split on two 99 min CDs (at least I think they're 99 min, each CD is 800MB)
and I want to back copy it. My Plextor can't burn 99 min CDs... What can I do?

I have a problem:

I have a avi video split on two 99 min CDs (at least I think they're 99 min, each CD is 800MB)
and I want to copy it. My Plextor can't burn 99 min CDs... What can I do?

800M is 90 min (99 min is 870M), AFAIK.
Haven't tried to burn one. But my friend did. And his system failed to recognize 'em as 800M...
He managed to burn 'em with BAO (overburn) though.

... yeah, and some info on the matter:
http://www.cdr-zone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=146