PCs For Dummies® Windows®, 7 Edition

Chapter 24. Your Personal Disc Factory

In This Chapter

• Understanding the disc-burning thing

• Inserting the disc

• Choosing a proper format

• Working with the disc in Windows

• Wiping out an RW disc

• Labeling discs

• Throwing away a disc

Behold the optical disc! It's your PC's removable media of choice. The computer eats optical discs, consuming them for their data, music, or video. Better still, your PC has the ability to create discs. Indeed, armed with a stack of recordable discs, you and your computer can become your own personal disc factory. This chapter tells you how.

• Creating an optical disc on your computer is known as burning a disc. It has nothing to do with fire.

• For information on creating a music CD, refer to Chapter 27.

• See Chapter 26 for information on creating a video DVD.

Disc Creation Overview

Making optical discs on your PC is super cinchy. You need an optical drive that can write to recordable optical media, which is pretty much standard PC hardware these days. Then you need Windows; the operating system has all the tools you need to burn an optical disc.

First, ensure that your PC came equipped with a recordable optical drive. You can tell by looking at the stickers or "tattoos" on the drive's faceplate. Or, you may see any of the abbreviations listed in Table 24-1.

If you need help identifying your PC's optical drive, see Chapter 9.

Second, you need software. That software is Windows, which recognizes blank optical media inserted into the recordable optical drive. Later sections in ...