BurnAware Free – Very good basic disc burning program for; backup, creating data, audio, MP3 music, DVD-Video discs and burning disc images. Features include; Create data and multi session CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs. Create Audio CDs and MP3 CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs. Record boot disc images. Create DVD-Video. Create and record disc images. Supports all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA). Supports UDF/ISO9660/Joliet Bridged file systems (any combination). On-the-fly writing for all image types (no staging to hard drive first). Auto-verification of written files. Supports CD-Text and unicode characters. All performed from a clean, flexible GUI. (XP/Vista 32/64bit)
CDBurnerXP – Arguably, the best all round free burning software. Feature set consists of three main tasks, which are prompted via a wizard upon start-up: writing data CDs and DVD's, creating CDs for audio playback, and ripping music from CDs or editing ID3 tags. Contrary to reports from some reviewers, CDBurnerXP does not include any feature to copy discs. Mind you, I cannot locate one which does, if you know of any please let us know via the ‘Freeware’ section on DavesComputerTips Forum. (XP/Vista 32/64bit)
CDex - Rip songs from CD to your computer. Features include; direct recording of multiple tracks, read/store album information from/to the cdplayer.ini file, read/store album information from/to a local and/or remote CD Database (CDDB), support CD-Text, advanced jitter correction, indicates track progress and jitter control, normalization of audio signal, supports conversion of external WAV files, support for M3U and PLS play list files. Also includes the ability to transcode one compressed format to another and record directly from an analog input. (XP/Vista)
Exact Audio Copy – Excellent ripper with far too many features to list here. EAC’s main advantage over many other rippers is its ability to successfully process scratched/damaged CDs. (XP/Vista)
ImgBurn – Burn images to disc with just a couple of mouse clicks. ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats - including BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI. It can burn Audio CD's from any file type supported via DirectShow/ACM - including AAC, APE, FLAC, M4A, MP3, MP4, MPC, OGG, PCM, WAV, WMA and WV. You can use it to build DVD Video discs (from a VIDEO_TS folder), HD DVD Video discs (from a HVDVD_TS folder) and Blu-ray Video discs (from a BDAV / BDMV folder). Includes support for all the latest drives. (XP/Vista 32/64bit)
Totally Free Burner – From DanDans digital media is a lesser known but very good all round free burning solution which will burn; audio CD from MP3, wma, ogg and wav files. Data CD/DVD, video files to DVD, BIN/ISO image to CD/DVD. Features include; Support for all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA). Multi-Session or Disc-at-Once mode to all supported media formats. Support UDF/ISO9660/Joliet Bridged file systems (any combination). On-the-fly burning for all image types. Create bootable data discs or images. Auto verification of data images. All burning tasks are invoked from a simple, intuitive interface and support for burning video files to DVD in UDF format (compatible with DVD players) is a big plus. (XP/Vista)