Can I backup music CDs onto DVD-R's?
Asked by
2davidc8 (
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March 18th, 2013
I understand that one way to backup a music CD that I own is to “rip” the CD to my PC, then copy it onto a CD-R.
But I am wondering about the possibility of putting the music of several CDs on a single DVD-R, since a DVD can hold a lot more data than a CD. Can this be done just as easily as writing onto a CD-R, or is there a special “trick” involved?
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You can back up the music on a CD to a DVD, but understand that you will not be able to play that music on a CD player.
If something happens to your original source, you would then need to copy that data from the DVD onto a recordable CD.
@filmfann Yes, I understand that CD music players, especially older ones, can’t play DVDs. But can DVD players play the music that originally came from a music CD?
Yes, but keep in mind that CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are not the best reliable long-term storage media. External hard drives live longer. You might not be able to read a DVD-R in the year 2025.
@mattbrowne Good to know. Thank you for your answer.
But… I’ve got music CDs that I bought in the 1990s, so they are more than 20 years old and they still play fine. Is there a difference between commercially produced CDs and those that I might “burn”?
@2davidc8 – Yes, there is indeed. Commercially produced CDs and DVDs are known to last longer than the self-burned ones. Plus it depends on the brands of the blanks. A whole batch of my self-burned CDR+Rs only 8 years old no longer works.
I concur on cd-rs and DVD -/+ rs being not as long-term as pressed/stamped ones. While optical media is EMP proof external HDs are more reliable. Buy multiple drives from multiple manufactures in case a particular model has a bad trait. The only brand I’ve ever had croak out was an early western digital 500gb model. And when buying drives from Iomega and verbatim keep in mind they probably are made (internally) by one of the majors like seagate, western digital, Fujitsu etc.
Hope this provides some insight.
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