Well,

I'm over 40 and while I got into computer early, I've missed a generation or two. The whole CD burning thing has me confused. I seem to be able to burn data files, but I'm having trouble with what I would think would be one of the easiest things.

I want to make a copy of a CD I own and keep it in my car. Protecting the original from damage and selfishly, keeping the original at home. However I seem unable to do this, so it seems i'm not smart enough to figure it out.

To make this a little more difficult, I own an Apple Powerbook G4 with a firewire CD burner.

Any suggestions on software I may need (or a clue if it seems I don't have one) would be greatly appreciated.

Fred

It depends on the audio CD and the protection, if any. Music companies use various protection schemes to prevent people making copies of CDs.

You may also need specific hardware (like the Plextor burner) or software like CloneCD.

Perhaps you could post more details?

Trouble is, I know nothing of Apple software, so I can't recommend any software for that.

As burnproof said, some audio CDs have copy protections these days. A helpful thread on identifying these is this:
http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?threadid=46159

Any extra information on your setup would be helpful, such as the brand and model number of your writer.

Don't know any Mac software either, but if you just want to copy an unprotected audio cd, just use your standard burning program.

If you have a writer and another device which can read the cd, you can make a copy on the fly (that is: read from device 1 and write at the same time to the writer). Another option (which I always prefer above copying on the fly) is to save the tracks of the audio cd to the harddisk and after that start a burning session with the just copied tracks. This procedure works just like when you make a data cd!

Good luck!

No Mac knowledge here either.
But if you use the software which you got with your writer, just make a 1:1 copy. There's probably some option that says "backup disc" or something like that.

If you tell us what software you use to burn cd's, we might be able to help you more, cause we could look it up somewhere.

I've got a QPS Que! Fire Drive, the 24x-10x-40x CD-RW Drive, external.

I have a Mac G4 powerbook, running OS X v. 1.1.5

I've tried burning with the roxio Toast software that was included, as well as Apple's iTunes software.

I've tried to drag and drop file icons from the audio CD to the new CD, utilizing apples disc burning software.

So far, no luck.

I'm sure I'm missing something simple, because it shouldn't be this difficult. I certainly appreciate all the help you've given so far.

Thanks,

Fred

The only thing I can come up with, is that you are only copying shortcuts to your cd. You drag and drop the 1kb "tracknumbers" that are listed when you approach your cd with a cdrom, but not the music.

For musiccd's, you have to choose the "create audio-cd-profile" (I assume something similar is included in Apple's software). Now you can drag and drop; the software knows you want the tracks, and not only the shortcuts.
I think you selected "data cd", which explains why no music was recorded.

However, the easiest way of making a copy, is just a 1:1 backup. No drag and drop is involved, just the original cd in your cd-rom and a blank cdr in the writer and choose "copy cd".
If you don't have two cd-devices, you can make an image from the original cd with your writer and afterwards burn the image to a blank cdr.