Safe to Burn a Backup?

Hi,

I was one of the winners of the Windows 7 Signature Edition giveaway and therefore have one of the promotional Windows 7 disks. I would like to burn a backup of this disk because if it ever gets lost or broken I have no eligibility for a free replacement. I would like to use Nero to burn a copy, but before doing so I would like to get confirmation that this is safe and will not damage my disk. Could someone please confirm or deny this?

Thank you.

 

Is this a trick question?

No, the disc being read by your optical drive shouldn't damage it (unless it already has stress fractures which could make it explode into shrapnel at high rpm, but that could happen anyway and isn't related the copying process).

 

No, not a trick question. I've seen labels on disks before that said something along the lines of "attempts to copy this disk can lead to damaged hardware". I wanted to make sure this isn't the case here.

 

Sounds like a typical copyright lawyer's scare tactic. You'd be surprised at the kind of stuff people believe.

 

The only issue that may arise is copyright... where some countries laws will allow a backup and others won't.

Another problem maybe copyright protection - if you can "just copy it" - then you only have a potential copyright problem.
If you have to bypass any copyright protection (e.g. some disc won't just copy in Nero, or won't just copy to the HDD via explorer) then you are most likely breaking the law by bypassing the copy protection.
(You could possibly dig up some legal cases were the argument was you are allowed (in that country) to create a copy for personal use - and hence the person believed bypassing copy protection is covered by law providing its for personal backup - but read up on it)

I'd imagine this is nonsense too - in theory the process of copying a medium is no different to reading it/playing it. (installing software, viewing a DVD, CD) - the drive reads the info and then writes it to another disc - either saves it temporarily to a HDD or directly burns it - so I'd say nonsense too.

The other thing is, let's assume a disc would damage your drive - you can claim that the drive was damaged while you legally played the media and demand a repair from the company - how would they disprove this?

So apart from it technically being a suspect idea, it would result in a lot of court cases (US especially)...

 

It's the Unabomber.

Seriously.

The DVD is read by a laser.

A long long time ago, it use to be possible to put in certain code into a CD that caused a CD burner's firmware to lockup when it read it. But that only affected certain models.

The label is just scare tactics.

 

Lasers are dangerous. Pew pew!

Nero will not damage the disc.

 

But why take the chance? Do yourself a favor and use ImgBurn...

 

Which changes what?

If you have to buy Nero - hmm... if you have it you may as well use it

 

agreed imgburn is way better than nero with doing this and you will not have to even configure anything, simply choose create image from disc. wait. then stick a blank in and choose write image to disc choose the file and burn. very simple. it will auto adjust everything for you. i hate nero and the crap it installs everywhere and embeds itself so deeply into windows. it will never again find its way on any of my systems. ive had to format a couple times specifically due to the newer versions of nero..

 

Thanks for the advice everyone. I went ahead and made the backup. I was wondering how it was possible to damage hardware via DVD, but I wanted to make sure here. Backup went smoothly. Thanks!