In a message dated 7/17/01 9:40:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time, charlieh@wt.net writes: << If using a mastering program such as Easy CD Creator, you don't back up directly from FO to the CD. Instead, what you do is to do your back up from inside FO to your hard drive. Then, later (I usually collect several different backup files, renaming each of them to correspond to the date they were made), you write these backup files to the CD using multisession mode. With this procedure, I normally write about 4 or 5 backup files at a time...... you set whatever number you are confortable with. I save my "backups" to a second hard drive, so they are true backups in that they are saved independently to the current working file. Since I make additions to my genealogy file almost daily, I also make a backup file almost daily.... but only write them to a CD every one or two weeks. Once written to the CD, they are erased from the hard drive to free up room. >> I back up directly to the CDR using the programs that came with my CD burner. If the CD is formatted and ready for info it is simple process. Also I name each file using the date as the designator. For example if my file is "name" then I use name0101 for Jan 1st backup. name0717 for July17 backup etc. No problem to keep them straight this way. On my machine the burner asks when I eject it whether I want to keep it so only the burner can read the files and add more to it or do I want to change the CD so the regular CD drive can read it. As long as I intend to put more on I chose the first option. As long as the CD is in the burner I can read old ones and recover any of them.