Burning your finished project onto a CD-ROM

Your projects have to be submitted in the form of a CD-Rom. You will hand in an original and a copy of the work you have done for this project. The CD will have all the work files which you have created as part of your project on it. I cannot tell you exactly how to organise your files on the CD-Rom. That is something you will have to decide for yourself either individually or by giving constructive criticism to each others work.

This hand out is intended to give general guidance on how to transfer your files onto CD using the facilities available on the University system.

  • You will need to find a PC with a CD-RW drive. There are only two of these at present in the room where you are doing the scanning training. However, all the PCs on the ground floor in the library have these. You can check whether or not a PC has a CD-RW drive by looking at the CD tray. If it has a numerical marking such as 40x16x12 then it is a CD-RW drive. If it only says DVD-ROM or CD-ROM it is not suitable for your purposes.
  • The PC will need to have data transfer software installed. The University uses Nero Burning Rom. After you have checked that the PC you are using has a CD-RW drive, you will need to log on and search for Nero Burning Rom. It is usually in the accessories or applications folder of the Novell Netware applications window which comes up automatically on your desktop when everything has loaded. The program icon looks like this.

Using Nero Burning Rom

  • Click on the program icon to start the program. This window will appear:

  • Click on the Wizard button. A different window will appear. N.B. It may be the case that the Wizard window will come up straight after loading the program. If this happens, disregard the last point.

  • Click in the circle by Compile a new CD and click on Next

  • Click in the circle by Data CD and click on Next

  • Click in the circle by Compile a new data CD? and click on Next
  • Take note of what appears in the next window. Remember in particular what the Burn button looks like. It is not immediately evident when you get to the next stage. Click on Finish. (N.B. this is a bit confusing, seeing as you haven’t done anything with your files yet!)

  • This looks complicated but it really isn’t. The right hand side represents the files on your computer. The left hand side represents the (currently) empty space on your CD.
  • Use the middle right window to navigate to the drive on your computer where your files are stored. If you are doing this on a university machine, this will normally be your P: drive. At home it will normally be your C: drive. If you have ever used Windows Explorer, this step of finding your files will be very familiar to you.
  • When you have navigated to the folder on your computer where your files are stored, you then have to drag your files over to the left hand section of the window. Click on a file to select it, and, holding down the left mouse button, drag it over to the left hand side of the window and drop it into the section with the heading Name.
  • The file will appear in that section. Do this for each file you need to drag over. You should end up with a window like the one below. For this example, we’ll assume you have six files. N.B. When completing your work, name your files with instantly recognisable names. It will make this part a lot easier if you know exactly which files are which.

  • Make absolutely sure that these are the files you want to put on the CD. If you make any mistakes, it is very difficult to edit a finished CD and you would probably end up having to do the whole burning process again!
  • So, when you’ve checked and double checked and you’re absolutely sure you have dragged over everything you want to be on the CD, you are ready to burn the files to the CD. And you do this by clicking on the burn button., which, on the next screenshot, is the one eight places from the right on the button bar above the file browser windows. When you hover the pointer over it “Opens the Write-CD dialog” appears below it and to the right. But don’t click it yet!
  • Make sure that you have inserted a blank recordable CD with absolutely nothing else on it into the CD tray and click on the burn button. This window will appear
  • Check the circle next to “Burn” and click on the button marked Burn. This screen will appear (next page)
  • The burning process is now under way and will take a few minutes at most. When the burning process has completed, you will get this notification.

At this point, you will know that the data has been successfully burnt to CD. Review your CD to make sure everything is on it and then go through the process again to make your back up CD.