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General discussion

Quick question

Feb 18, 2004 2:23AM PST

I have about 5.5 gigs of mp3 songs saved on my hard drive, is it possible instead of using so many cd's to burn and save them to burn them to a dvd-r cd. the reason i am doing this is because i am getting an error in event viewer that hard drive failure is iminent. im running xp home.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Quick question
Feb 18, 2004 3:57AM PST

You can probably burn them using a dvd/rw onto a dvd-r as data files rather than mp3 files....a regular cdrw burner wouldn't be able to recognize the dvd-r format cd.

If you only have a regular cdrw, you could burn a hundred or so mp3 files to one cd but they wouldn't play in a cdplayer.

When you have replaced the harddrive, just copy the files back to your new harddrive and then burn them again as music cd's.

I'm not sure if you will have to change the properties of the files once they are back on your harddrive, but normally copying from a cd to a harddrive leaves the files in read only mode so you probably wouldn't be able to change the file name or edit any of them until this is changed. If you can change them all in one fell swoop rather than one at a time for that many files, great. I know there are ways to do this, but I'm brain dead at the moment with trying to remember how, although it's simple.

TONI

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Re:Re:Quick question
Feb 18, 2004 2:42PM PST

Thanks for your help, you answered my question and sent me in the right direction. Now can anybody tell me the cheapest place to get a legal and fully functional version of win xp either home or pro. Im a man on a budget..lol
Thanks to all for your help

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Legal XP Home for $99
Feb 18, 2004 8:28PM PST

Get the upgrade version...this is the least expensive version rather than a full version. You will be asked during the installation to insert the cd of your previous full version of Windows in order to prove you are eligible for the upgrade but that way you don't have to install the older version first and then do the upgrade. You get a clean installation of XP.

TONI

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Re:Legal XP Home for $99
Feb 19, 2004 2:17AM PST

I got ripped off by HP and microsoft when i bought my pc. XP came prepackaged and no disks were provided Sad
so for almost 3 years i have been praying that i never had to reinstall. ive been lucky up till now.

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I know those HPs.
Feb 19, 2004 2:39AM PST

Every one of them offers the end user to create a set of install CDs. This is the new way of things. But if the user can't or won't make such, then they run into issues like yours.

Another complaint with restore CDs, either the ones you make or supplied with the machine, some go ballistic when they find they can't transfer the OS license to their new machine. I agree it seems odd that a motherboard failure not only kills the machine, but the OS license too!

Bob

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Re:Quick question
Feb 19, 2004 11:37AM PST

On burning mp3's to cd, you can get from 170 to 250 songs on a cd. Burn it as a data cd. The reason for the large gap is the variance in bit rates and song length. They burn fine to dvd+ or minus also. You can get around 4.4 gigs on a dvd the rest goes to overhead.After you install the new h-d just copy back to the drive and all should work great.Egghead.com has xp-prowith sp1 oem disks for 138.00 + you need to buy some hardware(oem lic requirement).So you need to spend a few dollars more to buy a cable or some such item. Hope this helps