Reformatting question

[jzinckgra]

Ok, here's the problem. I have a new computer a I am building and I want to use my current HD in the new puter, but I need to copy a bunch of files to CD before I reformat my HD for the new puter. I don't have more than ~3 gigs, so I thought I would burn a few CD-RW discs, but for some reason my burner won't burn to these discs even though they have worked before. I tried win XP burner and Nero 7.0 and no luck. I was able to burn a file to CD-R, so I know the burner works.
My other thought was to throw another HD into my current computer and set it up as a slave. That HD came from another puter and has win XP loaded. I thought I would just transfer the files from my existing HD to this HD, then after I reformat my current HD, I would transfer the files from the slave back. Will this work?
Is there an easier way or does anyone know why Nero isn't working now, when it did before? What about just getting a USB HD, seeing as I should probably have some form of backup for the new puter.
As you can see I don't have my current HD backed up (stupid, eh?), but I wanted to at least get the important stuff off 1st before I reformat.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Two things could be wrong with the CD-RW burning, one is the discs are bad (though unlikely that all would go bad all at once) or the drive itself could be the issue. Burning a CD-RW uses a different laser or laser temp (depending on the drive) than CD-R. You could try another brand of CD-RW as well.

As far as backing up you could put a slave drive in your comp, back up your data onto there, then restore it afterwards. Just as a precaution, after backing up your data to it disconnect it before formatting just so you don't accidentally format the wrong one and keep windows from removing the boot sector on the slave drive. An external USB2 drive would work as well and like you said could be used for backups later.