When it comes to techniques two of the most important factors to remember when burning discs are: use high-quality media, and burn one or two 'steps' below the maximum speed of that media. For example, your media is 48X so burn at a maximum of 40X; that will give you the best possible chance to produce a long-lasting, easy-to-read disc
We're not going to attempt to substitute this page for the user's manual that comes with your burning software. What we are trying to do is to reassure you that burning perfect disc images from files downloaded from Usenet is not only possible- it's also easy and needs very little in the way of prior-knowledge or special tools.
Whether the source is a commercial ‘silver’, or some home-made disc- if you wish to create one or more backups you should create a disc-image first, for several reasons: You may wish to make multiple copies; you may wish to burn a test disc, or test the image by mounting it before burning multiple copies; you may wish to archive the disk in RAR format; and perhaps you may even wish to post it to UseNet. These are only some of the possible reasons why you should first create a disc image before burning multiple copies.
To create a disc-image you need software suitable to the task. Most burning software is capable of making an ISO-formatted disc-image, which is perfectly fine for the vast majority of discs, as they carry no intrinsic copy-protection on the media itself, but rely upon some other method (or no method) of assuring authenticity. The only software not suitable for making such images is software that specializes in a single type or class of image, such as an mp3 burner. That would not be appropriate for making an image of a video CD of your 'genius-level' infant's first steps/words/smile, to share with ALL your friends and family, eh? <g>
For discs with data and sound, music, video, etc., you will probably need to make a BIN image. There are several programs capable of creating BIN+CUE disc-images; see the Image Types page, or the Tools page for which software can create and burn a BIN. Once you have software capable of generating a proper BIN or ISO image from your master, you are ready to make the image.
We can't explain specifically how to do this with all the different applications out there, there are just too many now. You will need to read the manual for your particular software to learn specifically how to do it. In general you will have a menu-option somewhere to "Create Disc Image"-Once you have selected that you will be presented with options for the type of image you wish to create. Most programs with proprietary image formats will have that type set as the default- which is probably not what you want. The choices will most-often be in a scrolling list-menu; just select the most appropriate one. There will 'usually' be at least one choice besides the proprietary one, usually ISO. If your software doesn't have native support for the BIN file type, and the disc you wish to create is just a simple data disc, then ISO would be perfectly fine as an image type.
If the disc from which you are creating the image is a complex disc that is not suitable for the ISO format and your software only offers ISO (and perhaps a proprietary format such as CIF or CDI) then you really should get another burning program such as Alcohol 120% in order to create a suitable BIN+CUE image.