WinBackup doesn't support my CD Writer?

Over the weekend, Lanny B. indirectly asked me a question about how to span an archive using WinBackup:

" Hi Dennis! As always, love your newsletter! Keep up the good work.

I'm writing today about WinBackup. It seems that the program currently does not support my CD-R/W burner (LITE-ON LTR-24102B). Whenever I try to run a backup and record to the burner, all I get is an error message which states that my 'CD-R/W drive is not supported.' There is no mention if / or when WinBackup will support the writer in the future. What can I do? "

Recall --

WinBackup is a simple-to-use backup program for the Windows operating system. With a few mouse clicks, a schedule can be created to backup the Windows Registry, Outlook / Outlook Express emails, Internet Favorites, documents, and more. WinBackup was recently reviewed in our newsletter (click here to read).

As I mentioned in the (above) review, WinBackup can span archives. Spanning an archive simply means to glue a bunch of files together. Typically, compression is applied to the archive which minimizes overall file size. If the archive is too large to fit onto 1 CD (or any other backup medium), it can be split [spanned] to fit evenly on multiple volumes. In the case of WinBackup, the archive can be split (spanned) by clicking on the Backup Settings button; ensure that "Split Backup into ... MB" is selected (use 650MB for CDs).

If a CD-R/W isn't directly supported by WinBackup, it is still possible to write an archive to the hard drive -- spanning if necessary -- and then export to the CD-R/W using supported CD Writer software that came with the burner.

I personally have WinBackup scheduled to archive my web folder every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 4 AM (when I'm not usually using the computer). I don't use the "Save to CD" option; instead, I choose to save my archive to my hard drive, where it is later backed up onto CD at my convenience.

Having an archive "updated" is referred to as "freshening an archive". Freshening an archive takes much less time than it does to create an archive from scratch, since only new / modified files are added to the backup [older files remain untouched, but still present].