FortattingCDs and DVDs so they can be used as an extra drive

...the same machine.. They usually cause conflicts, especially with formatting programs (packet writing) such as Roxio and Nero contain..

That said, both Roxio and Nero have packet writing tools which will allow you to format the disc.. It's best to use RW discs such as CD-RW or DVD-RW as they can be erased, written to, then erased again.. If you have Nero installed, the program is called InCD.. If Roxio's Easy CD Creator, then program is called Drag-To-Disc..RecordNow may also have such a format tool but I'm not familiar with it.

Nero 6 is currently on this machine so as an example, I open Nero StartSmart, then click on the "paper" icon in the upper left, then choose "Format/Prepare Rewritable CD" or "Format/Prepare Rewritable DVD". I then follow the prompts to format the disc.. Easy CD Creator has options to format the disc as well.

One note, although the "extra drive" is a nice thought and has some uses, DO NOT depend on it as a permanent backup. Sure, it's easy to copy and paste from the hard drive to a disc but they aren't very reliable. Discs that have been formatted have a funny way of becoming unusable at the worst times. Instead, you can use a standard "finalized" burn on an RW disc and it's much more reliable.. When you're ready to write to it again, simply erase the disc and burn it again. RW discs can be written to a lot of times.

Hope this helps.

Grif

I know these programs sound great, but they're almost always way more trouble than they're worth.

* They're significantly less compatible with other systems
* They wear the discs out much faster
* Data loss rates are considerably higher
* Conflicts with other software, or just general problems, are common
* Performance is deplorable due to poor random access times of optical media

Optical media (CDs and DVDs) are just not well suited for this. Like I mentioned, the random access times of optical media is horrible compared to magnetic or flash memory based media.

If you want to avoid problems, use CDs and DVDs like they were meant to be used. Burn the entire set of files you want, then when you want to make changes, you erase the entire disc and burn it again. It's tedious and time consuming, but you're far less likely to lose any data that way, or have any other problems.

it comes with "Incd" but I don't see that in Nero Ultra7 anymore. But it does have a "backup file" program, you might take a look at that and see if it will work for you.