Imgburn Guide

[Suyay Escarsega]

This guide will walk you through burning an ISO image to a CD or DVD with the free (and excellent) ImgBurn. You can use this guide to burn just about any CDs, including our Windows recovery discs (or download Easy Recovery Essentials directly from here).

The queue system will allow you to put several CUE files and images in a burning queue and then burn these in a row after each other. For the individual CUE files/images you can specify how many copies to burn, which drive to use, write speed and if you want to delete the file/image after the burning is done. It's not possible to write to several drives at the same time.

After that the new disc is inserted, ImgBurn will automatically start the burning of the new image in ten seconds. You can change this time by altering the setting 'Insert Next Disc - Auto 'OK'' in the tab 'Write' in the settings window. See section 4.15 of this guide.

The 'Create CUE' function allows you to compile an Audio CD. This function is explained in section 4.4 of this guide. You can also use the 'How to burn an Audio CD from music files using ImgBurn, Supported files include Ape, Flac, Ogg, MP3, Wav and Wma.' guide on how to use the 'Create CUE' function.

'Ez-Mode Picker' is the mode and window you will see when you start the program for the first time. It's a menu to the most common tasks that you can perform in ImgBurn. It's main purpose is to give newcomers to the program an easy way to pick the right mode for the task they would like to do.

After that you have added your files and folders to your project you can then use the 'Build Settings', described in section 3.3.2, to customize your project. ImgBurn have several built in warning messages to alert you if you try to select some settings that are not compliant to your project. At the final stage in the Build Mode, described in section 3.3.3, you can either decide to create an image file that will be saved on your hard disk for later burning or burn the project directly to your drive.

With a 'Project File', you can at any stage save your current work on the project for later continuing or save the final project for recurring tasks, such as a simple backup of files and folders from your computer to a disc.

'Recurse Subdirectories' means that the program scans the subdirectories of any folder you add to the list (and the subdirectories of those subdirectories etc etc) - otherwise you'd only have files from within THAT folder.

Note: This tab is only visible if you have selected 'Image File' as the 'Output' option. The purpose of this tab is to ensure that the image file is created right, depending on the media you plan to burn it to.

Even if this setting is disabled and you are building an image that contains more than 8 directory levels, ImgBurn will ask you if you want to ignore the ISO9660 directory depth message on a 'one time only' basis.

Allows you to add files that exceed the limit imposed by the ISO9660/Joliet file systems. Those file systems will record the file size as 4GB (-1 byte) but all their data will be physically present in the image. The UDF file system will use the correct size.

ISO 9660:1999 is the latest update to the ISO 9660 standard. It improves on the restrictions imposed by the older standard, by extending the maximum path length to 207 characters, removing the eight-level maximum directory nesting limit, and removing the special meaning of the dot character in filenames.

Joliet is Microsoft's extension of the file format ISO9660. The extension includes that the file format supports Unicode and long file names. Most current PC operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD, are able to read Joliet-formatted media.

Normally, the creation date must be before the modified/accessed date and it's 'tweaked' so that's always true. (I take the 'Modified' date to be the most important of the 3 as that's what's displayed in Explorer)

As an example I'm going to create a bootable Windows XP image/disc based on my original Microsoft installation disc. There are various modes you can create this depending on if you have the original Microsoft disc or if your system was preinstalled by the computer manufacturer and if you are going to include service packs or additional driver files. There are plenty of guides for these cases to find through Google.

In my example I have already extracted the boot image from my original Microsoft installation disc, by using the 'Extract Boot Image' function, so I select 'None (Custom)' to be able to manually set the options 'Developer ID', 'Load Segment' and 'Sectors To Load'.

Option when creating a bootable disc to have the program patch the 'Boot Information Table'. You shouldn't enable this option when building a Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2008 bootable installation disc (i.e. using an 'ETFSBOOT.COM' boot image).

Note: There are also two additional guides 'How to create a Windows XP installation disc, Slipstream a service pack and burn a new disc' and 'How to create a Windows Vista / 7 installation disc, that covers the 'Bootable Disc' function.

It also gives a check that your writer can deal with the commands that is sent to it during the write phase. As the laser beam is never activated, it can't test that the media will burn without burn fails, generated by bad write quality.

If you want to verify that your compilation has been written properly to your disc you can select this option. It will re-read your burned disc and compare it to the original source file(s). The 'Verify' option is disabled if you have selected the 'Test Mode' option.

If you want to verify that your image has been written properly to your disc you can select this option. It will re-read your burned disc and compare it to the original source files or image. The 'Verify' option is disabled if you have selected the 'Test Mode' option.

The 'Discovery' mode is useful if you want to put your drive / media to the test! Used in combination with either BurnPlot, DVDInfoPro or Opti Drive Control, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing.

It also gives a check that your drive can deal with the commands that is sent to it during the write phase. As the laser beam is never activated, it can't test that the media will burn without burn fails, generated by bad write quality.

The 'SmartErase' function will rewrite CD-R/DVDR with random meaningless characters so that the original data and the disc will be "destroyed". Once you "SmartErased" a disc, you don't have to worry about that someone will access the confidential data from the disc you dumped. ImgBurn will ask you which type of erase it should perform. Note that you need to have a a SmartErase-capable drive installed, like the latest generation 22x DVD rewriters from Lite-On.

Synchronise Cache is used after a failed burn (not needed if you burnt with ImgBurn because it performs that operation regardless). It basically tells the drive that the write operation has finished and that it's to finish writing everything in it's cache to the disc and basically clean up after itself.

If you have an OEM drive from BenQ, LG, Lite-On, NEC, NuTech, Plextor, Ricoh or Samsung, this function makes it possible to add the OEM drive in a table, so that ImgBurn can read the current status setting(s) that you have applied. If you have already applied this in the 'Advanced' feature in the 'Change Book Type' function (section 4.2.12 of this guide), there is no need to do it here as it's the same function.

We want to change the book type to DVD-ROM. The other options are to be used if you want to stop using the book type feature. 'Normal' means that the inserted disc has not had the book type setting changed or modified and 'DVD +RW' is DVD +RW media.

The next time you write, the book type will be set to DVD-ROM. But as I have a re badged Lite-On drive, I also need to do the 'Advanced' step as shown in section 4.2.13.9 of this guide to get his information automatically in the log.

NEC/Optiarc official firmware will by default only book type +R DL media to DVD-ROM and also with official NEC/Optiarc firmware only the options for +R double layer media works in the 'Change Book Type' function.

In order to change and use the settings for +R and +RW media, you will first need to flash the drive with a patched firmware, that sets the book type for you and also allows for the options in the 'Change Book Type' function to be fully working. You can read more about how to apply a patched firmware in the 'Book type +R/+RW media on NEC/Optiarc drives' guide.

If you have patched firmware installed and also the option 'Auto Change Book Type' enabled, that is located in the ImgBurn settings in tab 'Write', this setting will always wants to book type to DVD-ROM. So if it's enabled, it doesn't matter what the temporary setting is currently set to, the program will still change the temporary setting so it book types to DVD-ROM, that's this settings sole purpose in life. If you do not want this behavior, disable the setting.

So if you for some reason temporary wants to disable the book type function to 'DVD-ROM', you need to set both the 'Permanent' and 'Temporary' value to '+R' or 'RW' and also have the option 'Auto Change Book Type' disabled.

The book type value you set here here will stay the same until you turn off your computer. The 'Temporary' value will take its initial value (after a power on of the computer) from the 'Permanent' setting. The 'Active Setting' will also be set to 'Permanent'.

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