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15 Free CD/DVD burning alternatives to Nero

When it comes to CD or DVD burning, the software most people tend to use is Nero. But Nero isn't the be all and end all of CD burning solutions. There are other softwares as well that perform much better than Nero in terms of resource usage and speed. Here is a list of 15 free burning softwares that you can use in place of Nero.

1. ImgBurn: ImgBurn is probably the best free CD/DVD burning tool available. ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats - including BIN, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI. It supports Unicode folder/file names, so you shouldn't run in to any problems if you're using an international character set. ImgBurn supports all the Windows OS's - Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (including all the 64-bit versions). If you use Wine, it should also run on Linux and other x86-based Unixes.

It's a very flexible application with several advanced features that are often lacking in other tools, especially when it comes to burning DVD Video discs. It supports all the latest drives without the need for updates (including booktype / bitsetting / advanced settings on many of the major ones - i.e. BenQ, LiteOn, LG, NEC, Plextor, Samsung, Sony).

Download size = 1.5MB

2. InfraRecorder: InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

Features
* Create custom data, audio and mixed-mode projects and record them to physical discs as well as disc images.
* Supports recording to dual-layer DVDs.
* Blank (erase) rewritable discs using four different methods.
* Record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE).
* Fixate discs (write lead-out information to prevent further data from being added to the disc).
* Scan the SCSI/IDE bus for devices and collect information about their capabilities.
* Create disc copies, on the fly and using a temporary disc image.
* Import session data from multi-session discs and add more sessions to them.
* Display disc information.
* Save audio and data tracks to files (.wav, .wma, .ogg, .mp3 and .iso).

Download size = 2.56MB

3. CDBurnerXP: CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.

Key Features:
* burn all kinds of discs
* audio-CDs with or without gaps between tracks
* burn and create ISO files
* data verification after burning process
* create bootable discs
* multi-language interface
* bin/nrg → ISO converter, simple cover printing and much more.
* Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista

Download size = 1.9MB

4. Ultimate CD/DVD Burner: Ultimate CD/DVD Burner is a simple and easy to use CD and DVD burning software package. It supports a very wide range of internal and external (USB 2.0 and FireWire) CD and DVD writers. Burn any data, copy any disc, make backups, create astonishing photo CD albums, make ISO CDs with this very easy to handle software!

The interface is intuitive and easy to use. Advanced options are available for those who want to take advantage of them, though they are completely optional, making Ultimate CD/DVD Burner the perfect CD/DVD burner software for users of any experience level.

Download size = 500KB

5. QuickBurn: QuickBurn is a free, easy and very useful burning software. Start this prorgram, Use drag and DROP for files and folders and click BURN CD. That´s all, very easy to use.

Features:
*Multisession support with import from an other session.
*CDRW erase normal or quickly.
*ISO create and Burn ISO. Bootable CD.
*Integrated Explorer.
*Support every CD/DVD Burner.
*Support ASPI or SPTI-Driver.
*No aspi required under W2K/XP.
*Session manager to manage your session.
*Verify files after burn.

Download size = 680KB

6. DeepBurner Free Portable: DeepBurner Free Portable is free, advanced, and extremely powerful CD and DVD burning package. It removes the hassle of making CDs, DVDs, and autoruns. DeepBurner Free Portable works straight from your removable media, whether it´s a USB flash drive, compact flash card, or even a good old floppy. Burn any data, copy any disc, make backups, make ISO CDs with this very easy to handle software!

Download size = 2.83MB

7. FinalBurner: FinalBurner is a freeware alternative to expensive CD and DVD recorders. It allows users to produce professional data, audio, video disks and ISO images. Many types of media are supported, including CD R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD DL.

Features:
* Burn Data CD/DVD
* Burn Audio CD
* Burn Video DVD
* Burn ISO images

Download size = 8MB

8. Burnatonce: Burnatonce can master data and audio discs, read/write image files, and copy on-the-fly. It's drag-and-drop interface has multi-language support and is fully compatible with XP themes. Multisession and bootable disc mastering is supported as well as long filename support using Joliet, Long Joliet, and Rockridge. Extra long filename support is provided with the ISO9660:1999 and UDF filesystems. Audio discs can be compiled from WAV, MP3, MP2, OGG, and FLAC files as standard while support for other audio formats can be added optionally. CD-Text can be written from the built-in editor, imported from freedb, read from media tags, or extracted from filenames. Pauses between tracks can also be set as silence, pregap, or postgap of varying lengths.

Download size = 3.82MB

9. Free Easy CD DVD Burner: Free Easy CD DVD Burner is a complete free and easy CD & DVD burning solution. Burn data and audio (WAV, WMA, MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, M4A) to your CDs & DVDs is now very easy with Free Easy CD DVD Burner. Burn and save ISO files, copy your CDs DVDs. Save your favorite audio CDs to mp3 with the internal grabber (CDDB request to get information about the album).

Standard ISO9660 Joliet, buffer UnderRun protection, Support multisession.
Support for dual-layer DVD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW.

Download size = 5.6MB

10. FairStars CD Ripper: FairStars CD Ripper is a free powerful software for ripping audio CD tracks to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV formats files on-the-fly. Free CDDB is supported(Querying & Submiting). It supports normalization when ripping, and also support ID3 tag. FairStars CD Ripper also supports playback with its built-in player.

Main features
# Rips CD to WMA, MP3, OGG, VQF, FLAC, APE and WAV on-the-fly.
# Supports automatic volume adjustment(normalization) during ripping.
# Supports multiple CD/DVD drivers.
# ID3 tag support.
# Support automatic saving ID3 Tags when converting, and also support ID3 tags display and edit.
# Query and submit CD disc information from/to the freedb(the Internet Compact Disc Database).
# Audio Playback control function Support.

Download size: 2.8 MB

11. Express Burn: Express Burn is a program for Windows that lets you create and record audio or data CDs with any Windows PC with an installed CD recorder.

With Express Burn you can record a data or audio CD quickly and easily by dragging the files you want onto the Express Burn icon and clicking record. The software then does all the rest converting the files if required. It is also the fastest CD writing program in the world using proprietary optimizing systems.

Download size = 300KB

12. SilentNight Micro Burner: SilentNight Micro Burner is a standalone CD/DVD/ISO/AUDIO burner, and ISO creator that is quite easy to use, is small, no installation is needed, just one single file, and it has its own ASPI layer build in. It also has a powerful search tool. This burner is under constant developement and all users are invited to join in with suggestions, corrections and translations to new languages.

Download size = 1.1MB

13. Burn4Free: This is another free DVD and CD burner.

Features:
*Burn4Free burn data (CD and DVD) and audio from different files types (WAV, FLAC, WavPack, WMA, M3U (mp3 winamp compilation) , MP3, MP2, MP1 OGG and CDA (normal cd audio tracks))
*CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM drives (SCSI - IDE/EIDE - USB) are supported
*Print Compilation, select layout, colors and items to print
4 way to burn your CD/DVD: you can choose the way you prefer to burn a CD/DVD (fly window, right click from explorer, internal add window, derag & drop
*1900 + COMPATIBLE RECORDERS

Download size = 4.2MB

14. EASY Burning: EASY Burning is the easiest way to backup your files in a cdr(w). Integrated to the shell (send to) or used as a normal application, EASY Burning works with any CD writer. Write a folder and files, pictures and what ever you want. Easy to use. Create Data CD from a folder. Backup your MP3 collection. Integrated into Shell. send to Integrated into Desktop.

Download size = 1.1MB

15. Disc Master: Disc Master is a solution for data burning and backup for CD and DVD recordable and rewritable discs, from Corel. Fast copy CD to CD or DVD to DVD, backup files, create mixed mode, or enhanced multi-session CDs. Supports CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM.

Download size = 12.3MB

16. StarBurn: StarBurn is a powerful tool for grabbing, burning and mastering CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. StarBurn supports all types of optical storage media (including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM) as well as a wide variety of burning hardware.

With StarBurn you can perform grabbing, copying and burning operations as well as advanced DVD authoring and mastering. These advanced features enable you to create DVD-Video content from custom video files, or compilations from other DVDs. Additionally with the DVD Splitting Wizard you can split DVD-Video discs into smaller parts and burn them to DVD writable discs or share them with the StarPort DVD-ROM emulator and watch DVD video directly on your PC. This enables you to create copies of 8.5 GB dual layer DVDs with just a few mouse clicks.

StarBurn has a Quick Start Wizard that provides to simplify frequently used operations such as disc copying, grabbing and splitting DVDs.

StarBurn is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Vista

Download size = 10.6 MB

Update:

17. UsefulUtils Discs Studio

Comments

  1. Hi Kaushik,
    Awesome blog.The layout is good and the tips are great.

    Regards,

    ReplyDelete
  2. No K3B in the list? This sucks

    ><)))'>

    ReplyDelete
  3. There is also Burrrn, which is great and reliable for making audio CDs via drag-and-drop of MP3s. Just audio CDs, though, so I understand why you might not have included it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I hate that every time someone kindly makes a list and shares it some ass clown comes along with a "what? no________???!?" comment.
    Nice list.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @deusdiabolus:

    Yes, I have not included those burners that only support audio or video files.

    @Anonymous:

    K3B is for Linux. This collection is for Windows.

    ReplyDelete
  6. bookmarked so i can come back to this and try these. ive gotta try them all to see which best fits my needs.

    a million thanks for this list.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good list of tools.There is an interesting article at www.chip-india.com with the title-
    "Be a Nero Ninja"

    Take a look at it.Hope this will be helpful to someone or the other.

    ReplyDelete
  8. thanks for the effort, but it's too bad you don't offer a real comparison, outlining the strength and weaknesses of each, so that the choice be easier: i don't feel like installing 15 software to find out which is good for me. What you 've done here is basically saving me a google search for "free CD/DVD burning software". So far i really like nero express, it is simple to use and works perfectly.
    i just wish there was a free alternative.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @pixeline:

    I agree that a comparison would have been better, but that involves too much work. I'm willing to do it if somebody pays me for it. ;)

    But then, what I have done is much more than a Google search. A simple google search won't bring you all the softwares that I mentioned (you can try that out), unless of course, you are willing to browse the results upto the 40th page!!

    I had collected these softwares by looking for them at several websites.

    If you are unable to decide, try out the first two I mentioned. They are good.

    ReplyDelete
  10. 4 from 15 of these are built on the top of the StarBurn SDK... Where's StarBurn itself? Did you see this one:

    http://www.rocketdivision.com/starburn.html

    Thanks!

    Anton

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hey no worries and thanks - you did a lot of the heavy lifting by rounding up these suspects. I had done a google on free dvd burners and ended up missing many of the ones on your list. The reason blogs work is because the rest of us can chip in a hand too.

    I sampled these: DropToCD, Free Easy Burner, ImgBurn, IfraRecorder, Ultimate, and CDBurnerXP. The one I'm sticking with is CDBurnerXP. All of the others had some quirk that made me keep looking. I even paid $20 for DropToCD after using it successfully (once) only to have it promptly turn several blanks into coasters. Some had problems recognizing the optical drive after the first burn, one didn't pass the verify test on WAV files, one got confused by an external HDD that has a CD partition. Anyway, the only one that seems to be able to burn more than one successful session in a row, for me at least, was CDBurnerXP. YMMV

    ReplyDelete
  12. @pluto:

    Thanks for confirming that. I did like the look of CDBurnerXP. Infrarecorder isn't bad too. I have used that.

    ReplyDelete
  13. not all of them are free :(

    ReplyDelete
  14. No. All are supposed to be free. Which one did you find not free?

    ReplyDelete
  15. avs disk creator is nolonger avalilable... u sud keep updating ur blog

    ReplyDelete
  16. @ankushkool:

    Sorry ankushkool. It's impossible to keep track of all links. It's readers like you who could help us to keep our blog updated.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  17. nice list
    You can check out for some more here
    http://www.bizzntech.com/2008/03/10/10-free-cddvd-burning-softwares

    ReplyDelete
  18. BurnAware Free Edition is no longer available.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Good collection. I'll try CD Burner XP anyway

    ReplyDelete
  20. you just cant replace nero.END OF STORY.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Cool idea, but please check your links. #12 - SilentNight Micro Burner sounded like what I was after, but the link took me to a site selling beds ans matresses

    ReplyDelete
  22. Nice list. You forgot Ashampoo Burning Studio Free (version 6.xx).

    ReplyDelete
  23. Try StarBurn from RocketDivision software. I installed it and it satisfies all my of needs.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Yes. here's the link: http://rocketdivision.com/download_starburn.html

    ReplyDelete
  25. nice stuff you guys have here.. Thank you for the software

    ReplyDelete

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