Can a DVD-R drive backup data?

[randym431]

I'm new to this. I just got a burner that burns CD-r, DVD+rw, and DVD-r. It came with a lot of software and something that says it lets you use the drive like a floppy. I guess that is burning data to a DVD-r or DVD+rw disc. Does this allow backing up HD data, like if the DVD-r was a huge floppy disk? And what or how much data would typically fit or burn onto a DVD-r disk? How bout dual DVD-r disks? (it also burns dual DVD too)
I'm mostly looking at backing up data from the hard drives, if it will do that.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Packet-writing software like Nero's InCD or the old Roxio DirectCD will allow you to write to the drive directly just like a floppy disk.

Unless you specifically need it, I wouldn't both with PW software. Just use Nero, Deepburner, CD Burner XP, or you favorite burning program to back up the data.

The size of a single-layer DVD-R is misleading -- it says 4.7gigabits, which translates into 4.37gigaBYTES (4475megabytes). Dual layer -R discs would hold twice as much.

 

[Zepper]

Generally the rewritable disks that are mainly used for packet writing are slower media than the +/-R media which are write-once. The +/-r are cheaper too, so I also recommend just doing backups to +/-R media.

.b.h.

 

[randym431]

Thanks for you input. InCD is what came with the drive. Just didnt know if it would write or use a dual layered disk with twice the area. Thanks!