Copying photos to a CD - basic but going mad...

[iloverhubarb]

Help. I just want to copy a load of photos onto CD so that I can print them out at Boots (and have a copy for safety of best photos each year is the plan). Have printed out at Boots fine before using a memory stick, but it's full now. So moving on to CD - think it will fit a whole year's worth of the best photos on it.

But - what kind of CD? I have a CD-R that I'm trying to use. Have tried to copy a whole folder of photos onto the CD. They all seem to be there, but there is a LOAD of other stuff - word docs - on the CD now too, no idea where these came from. Can I delete them?

More important, can I create a set of folders on the CD, and then copy selected photos into each folder? If so, how? Otherwise it'll just be an enormous heap of unidentified photos... And can I delete photos from the CD, can I add more/more folders later etc? I just haven't really got a clue.

And what is a DVD for - is that just for moving images or can I use that to store photos too? I also have blank DVD-r and DVD rw which I have never used! Think I am going mad here - will go and do something else for a while. It can't be that hard... Any advice obviously much appreciated.

A CD-R is a write once thing, so you can write things to it but not delete them. Some computers may allow you to add more things to an existing disc but you can't remove what's already on there.

So those word documents were either already on the disc and you added some photos to it, or you managed to also add them when you added the photos.

Yes you should be able to make folders on the disc, though exactly how you do that will depend upon the computer and software you are using.

The "normal" way these things are done is that you somehow create an "image" of how you want the CD to look. So you add the files and folders, move things around and rename them how you want them to be. And then you click on some "burn" type button and actually burn that onto the CD.

A DVD can be thought of as basically a much bigger CD-R. A CD can hold about 700mb of data, a DVD can take over 5gb, so more than 5 times the amount. So yes you can use it for photos, or indeed any other type of file.

DVD-r works the same way as CD-R, once you've put stuff on there you can't delete it.

DVD-rw allows you to delete things off of the disc and re-use it for something else. There's also a CD-RW disc that works the same way.

However I personally find DVD-r and DVD-rw not as widely accepted or as portable as CD-r. There are a few different standards and I've had trouble before making sure I used the right one. CD-R seems to me to be much simpler and more portable.

One thing to be aware of if using these discs for backing stuff up and/or filing it away is that they do deteriorate. They might "only" have a decade or so of life, some more but some worryingly less.

I've done it! Thank you so much Badgerspaws. That para about the normal way of copying meant I understood what to do - it worked perfectly easily. I can't tell you how long I've fiddled about with it. Just ask for help on mumsnet and you get a clear, sensible reply, explaining exactly what to - and answering my other confusions too. Can't tell you how thrilled I am with myself (little things etc)