Best way to back up 3 gigs of music

[JohnK]

I have exactly 2.94GB worth of music in my My Music folder, and I need back it all up because I'm doing a format/reinstall of Windows XP (it's getting slow and I'm almost out of hard drive space), and I'm going to have to back them up to CD-R... Is there a more convienient way of backing them up besides drag and drop? I.E. something automatic, or at least semi-automatic? Thanks! I have Windows Media Player 11 btw.

-John

[Dilbert]

There is no quick way to back things up to a CD. I'm afraid you will need to drag-and-drop and burn unless you have another hard drive you can use to back up. Sorry.

I would suggest, however, a more permanent solution: Getting a large hard drive to replace the old one. Even if you did reinstall Windows, you will eventually run out of space again. Getting a new, larger hard drive after backing up to CD would give you plenty of comfort, and you won't need to do it again for a long time. Plus, you can keep your old disk drive as well, and have even more hard drive space!

Expensive? Not really. Once you decide to pay for a hard drive, it's not too much more for a really good one. Some examples of this are evident at Newegg:

60 GB hard drive: $52.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144375
80 GB hard drive: $69.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144379
250 GB hard drive: $69.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144417
500 GB hard drive: $159.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136073

I have a feeling the last one should be much more than sufficient.

I'm not saying you'd have to buy a new hard drive, but I do think that you will eventually need one if you're running out of space.

[2k_dummy]

Get a gmail invite and establish an account. Email them the your gmail account. When you are ready to retrieve simply download them and save.

[fffreak]

You could use nero since it has a convenient size watch. Your best bet would be to use a dvd(which is the cheapest) if you have a dvdrw

[JohnK]

Actually I'm buying a bigger hard drive next month but until then I'm getting extremely annoyed (and this installation is only 3 months old).
As for the gmail suggestion, my connection is relatively slow (256K) so that would probably be less convenient than backing up to CD. If I had a faster connection though I would consider it.
And I do have Nero, but the problem I have is figuring out what i've already backed up. Oh well I guess I'll just have to spend all day backing it up. Thanks!

EDIT: I only have a CD-RW drive.

-John

[soybean]

So, you may need about 5 CDs to backup all your music files, right?  I wouldn't think this would take all day.  

[JohnK]

So, you may need about 5 CDs to backup all your music files, right?  I wouldn't think this would take all day.  

I tend to exaggerate (just a little)  
Thanks for all the suggestions and I think i'll start now.

-John

[JohnK]

You were right; exactly 5 CDs. Boy that wasn't as painful as I thought it was going to be. I'm burning the last one now. Thanks!

-John

EDIT: I've gotten this weird error twice (here's what nero says):

Code: [Select]

4:48:15 PM MATSHITA UJDA770 DVD/CDRW
         Buffer underrun protection activated
4:48:38 PM Caching of files started
4:48:38 PM Caching of files completed
4:48:49 PM Track following error
         D: MATSHITA UJDA770 DVD/CDRW
4:48:51 PM Logical unit not ready, operation in progress
         D: MATSHITA UJDA770 DVD/CDRW
4:48:51 PM Could not perform EndSession
4:48:51 PM Burn process failed at 24x (3,600 KB/s)
EDIT: I feel dumb... I didn't even bother restarting. It went away after I restarted.

[Rob Pomeroy]

Too late, BUT: 1-4GB USB pen drives are reasonably cheap on Amazon right now.