I thought I was copying .cda music files from one disk to another but thanx to some help from another forum I discovered all I have been doing is copying the 44byte shortcuts. How do I copy the actual .cda music files? Thanx

Your subject title does not indicate your problem.

The icons for a shortcut to a file by default always have a small box at bottom left with a bent arrow in it pointing up and to the right.

To find where the file is the shortcut is referring to......

If you select and RIGHT click on such an shortcut icon, by default it opens the Properties to the Shortcut tab page/window.
Where the file the shortcut refers to is, is stated on the Target line.
If the location text is too long to completely fit in the box, click on the line and use your left cursor key to see the rest of the line including the drive letter at the beginning of it.
If the drive letter is one for a CD or DVD drive, the file the shortcut refers to is on a CD or DVD, and not on your hard drive(s).
Otherwise, if double clicking on the shortcut icon does not go to the target, the file has been deleted or moved and the shortcut is no longer valid and the shortcut should be deleted.

If you want to find out where all .cda files are, use Search to find: *.cda
files - * being asterisk a.k.a. "star", the uppercase of 8, representing "wild card" = all files that have whatever is after *, on whatever whole drive or drives or folder you select to search within.

Whether or not you see files listed with visible .cda extensions depends on settings in Control Panel - Folder Options - View.
If they are still set to defaults, Windows does not show the extensions of many file types it, or programs that have been installed, recognizes natively.
Search will find the *.cda files despite that.
If you see no .cda extensions and want to change that, you need to go to Control Panel - Folder Options - View and click on the box beside Hide extensions for known file types to remove the checkmark.

You can also click on the circle beside Show Hidden flies and folders to place a dot there, and click on the box beside Hide protected operating system files to remove the checkmark if you like, but that is not recommended if you are an amatuer - deleting or altering those files can get you in trouble. Hidden files or folders are then shown with somewhat greyed out (faded) labels and icons.

"How do I copy the actual .cda music files?"

Rip them to MP3s and then burn an audio CD from the MP3s.

Tubes - the files will play off the CD but not after I copy them. Something is getting lost/missing in the copy process.
Aegis - explain "Rip them to MP3..." Thanx

"Tubes - the files will play off the CD but not after I copy them."

I looked it up.
Apparently that's exactly as intended.
See this:
http://www.file-extensions.org/cda-...

You could try searching on the web for programs that can "convert .cda" files to another format such as mp3. Usually they way they work is they play the file in the background and convert what is played to another format on the fly, which is perfectly legal to do.

Ripping is as Tubesandwires said. A ripper is a program that converts the CDA files to another format, usually (but not restricted to) MP3.

Another bit of useless information: CDA files are basically WAV format files. but they might not play unless they are on an audio CD disc.

OK, so it's essentialy the same thing.
I haven't fiddled much with this type of thing.
A friend has the Roxio Easy Media Creator 10 suite and it can rip some types of audio files.
The same friend wanted something to convert some windows media drm protected ebooks and similar iTunes ones she bought legitimately to mp3 or other formats so she bought a program that does that but it is a relatively slow process and the mp3 files are much larger than the original files (one ebook may nearly fill or overflow a single CD's capacity). It can convert up to nine? files at the same time, depending on the cpu speed and how much ram is available.

Tubes - the link you provided says .CDA files can be played only from the CD they were created on. So I downloaded a CDA file converter called "Xillisoft" and converted all the CDA files to MP3, copied them to a fresh CD, AND THEY PLAY!!! Good job to you and Aegis. This post should be a great help to a lot of readers. Thanx a million:>)

FYI there are free CD rippers at freewarefiles.com.

If the earth was created by a big bang, how come my car or computer or anything else isn't created the same way?

It's good to hear you solved your problem.