i have two installed-in-pc-tower cd/dvd drives, one plays, one writers....no problems with either Running Win XP with 1 G RAM

but i can't find a good free program that will allow me to directly copy a protected AUDIO cd (for legal personal backup use ) from the player to a blank cd in the writer -- without ripping to the hard-drive...which is a waste of time and resources

i have an old version of nero that does that among other options, but its results are not always great and since its EOM, no support availale

any suggestions?

Checkout,
http://www.filehippo.com/software/dvd/

Collectively replying with the sincerest thanks.
Replying individually with a follow-up question.

Sarah -- Since you linked me to the fascinating oldversion.com, are you suggesting an older version of Clone CD? Any in particular?

LH -- Comprehensive list! Nero 9 free looks promising. Any personal experience to report on this or another listed option?

Tiniki -- Your link will be useful to me for future needs...but I can only find audio converter software,
not on-the-fly copying that bypasses the hard-drive.....am I missing something?

Rroberto18, there is supposed to be an older version of CloneCd that is free, but so far I haven't found it.
Last I tried is 4.2.0.2. I know I had a free version ages ago, so it must be there. You can try the ones older than 4.2.0.2 ;)

Nero is great, but if the cd is protected it might balk. Don't know if that also happens in Nero 9.

Btw. on-the-fly is always risky quality-wise. You better not be doing anything else on your pc when you do it that way;)

LOL - sounds a lot like what I did when I had my old Win98 machine. I'm spoiled with my current Vista machine: can do almost anything simultaneously and don't have to worry about resources.

I use Nero 8, but haven't copied a cd in ages, because I only listen to internetmusic these days.

Though I don't know why you would get better burning results for data with your security off. I take it you don't burn that on the fly???
I had Avira giving me a false positive over an exe file when I was in the middle of burning a backup dvd.
Although that halted the burnprocess till I pushed the ignore button the dvd was burned ok. No problems at all.