Carbon CD is a freeware alternative to CloneCD and CD Manipulator designed to make backup copies of your music or data CDs.

Carbon CD is also an English version of the CD Manipulator written by Y. Kanechika in Japanese. Rizonesoft updated the code from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2010, cleaned up some code, and added nicer graphics.

Carbon CD is portable and ridiculously small at under 2MB. It detects your CDDVD drive and awaits your selection. While the updated icons are cute, they aren't necessarily clear. It might be nice to have text alongside the buttons, but you can mouse over for details. Choices include Read CD to Image File, Write from Image File to CD, Clone CD, Refresh Information, Mastering CD and Image File, Read Tracks from CD, Analyze Sub Channel, and Exit. A log file opens in a separate window at the bottom.

While CDs are slowly becoming a thing of the past, most of us will find the need to rip our CDs to our favorite format. Of course, Carbon CD can also make copies, erase, copy protect, and more. Carbon CD is small, portable, fast, and free. What else do you need?

General Features:

Create 1:1 copies onto CD-Rs and CD-RWs.

Supported formats: ISO, IMG, CUE, CCD, CDM

Does not require an ASPI driver.

Show Drive capabilities.

MSF Calculator.

Erase CD-RW media.

CD and Image File mastering.

Rip audio tracks.

Copy Protect CDs.

Reading Features:

Copies CDs in Single-Session mode or Multi-Session (RAW) mode

Analyze pregap

Analyze subcode

Ignore read errors

Fast error skip

Intelligent bad sector scanner

Swap audio channels

Writing Features:

Perform Optimum Power Calibration

Buffer-Underrun Protection