Question about burning cds/dvds

[adamcz]

Hope this is the right forum for this question.

There is a (good) chance that the computer I buy next week will have only one optical drive, so I will have to copy cds to the hard drive before burning them. Does doing this a lot fragment the hard drive? On my old school imac, I have a firewire burner, so I don't have to deal with this. How long will it take to copy a cd to the hard drive on a 1Ghz G4?

If I get a superdrive, can I copy DVD's? Or is the superdrive just for burning projects from imovie and final cut? If I can copy DVD's, how long does it take?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[solvs]

You could use a firewire cd-r/w on the new Mac. Or a cheap internal + the internal Superdrive if you get a PowerMac. If that's not an option, you can copy the info from a disc to the hard drive and back to a new disc with no problem. It'll go as fast as the drive can read it, but get lots of RAM. You can defrag if you want, but if you're erasing the copied info anyway, you wouldn't really have to worry about it. It's not as bad as fragmenting on PCs. You can use the Superdrive as a burner/ripper, but it is slower.

You can rip DVDs with third part software. Go to VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker.com). You can copy data DVDs natively.

Hope that helps.

[jholzner]

Originally posted by adamcz
Hope this is the right forum for this question.

There is a (good) chance that the computer I buy next week will have only one optical drive, so I will have to copy cds to the hard drive before burning them. Does doing this a lot fragment the hard drive? On my old school imac, I have a firewire burner, so I don't have to deal with this. How long will it take to copy a cd to the hard drive on a 1Ghz G4?

If I get a superdrive, can I copy DVD's? Or is the superdrive just for burning projects from imovie and final cut? If I can copy DVD's, how long does it take?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Well, I know that you can't copy DVD's with the super drive...it's mainly for burning data DVD's or movie projects from iMovie or FCP. I'm not sure if copying a cd to your harddrive fragments it but if you already have a firewire cd burner why not just keep it and use it with your new computer?

[iJon]

no you cannot copy movies, because movies are on dvd 9's and you can only buy dvd r5's. so its not possible, not because its limited besides software, but because of hardware.

iJon

[adamcz]

Thanks for your helpful responses. I can't keep the firewire burner, because I'm giving it to my mom along with my G3 400. I probably could pick up a usb/firewire cd player though right? Does anybody still make such a thing?

[solvs]

If you're getting a tower, just get a cheap CD burner. Go to Newegg (http://www.newegg.com) for some good deals. Burners are only a few dollars more than readers. If you aren't getting a machine that can have 2 optical drives, just get the cd-r/w and a firewire case. Or one already put together. DON"T get a USB burner. Too slow. OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com) is good too.

Go to Accelerate Your Mac (http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/) for a drive compatibilty database.

[madoka]

I've been using my superdrive to copy all sorts of DVDs with no probs. You just have to know what pieces of software to use. Most of it is freeware, so for around $50 in software, you can rip, compress, and burn DVDs onto blanks. For the most part the copies are decent enough for backups and most people can't tell the difference until I point out artifacts and pixelization to them.

[iJon]

Originally posted by madoka
I've been using my superdrive to copy all sorts of DVDs with no probs. You just have to know what pieces of software to use. Most of it is freeware, so for around $50 in software, you can rip, compress, and burn DVDs onto blanks. For the most part the copies are decent enough for backups and most people can't tell the difference until I point out artifacts and pixelization to them.
this is very true as well, i have one question, with the software you use does it keep all the menus and special features, or does it just copy the movies.

iJon

[madoka]

The compression software is the only one you need to pay for (about $50) and it can copy the entire DVD, menus and all or strip out all the extra stuff and just do the movie.

Here is a simple guide:

http://homepage.mac.com/tgpo/dvd2one.html

You'll find that you don't even need toast. Missing Media Burning is free and does what you need it to.

[dynamicd]

Originally posted by iJon
this is very true as well, i have one question, with the software you use does it keep all the menus and special features, or does it just copy the movies.

iJon

I do have the software, but I have not copied anything yet. I believe that since you're compressing the movie, you're taking away the menus.

[ftaok]

If you get a new G5 with 8GB of RAM, you could just copy the entire DVD (4.7GB) into RAM and not worry about your HD being fragmented.

[benixau]

BTW - whenever i have to burn a disc - CD or DVD i make a .toast file of it and keep it on my HDD.

That way i never need the original again it i want to burn it. Also, toast can use .toast files and make Mac OS believe that there are actually dics in the drive. I have had about 7 at once mounted.

how do i know the mac believes they are CDs? The icon is a CD one or DVD one - like when they go in the drives.

hope it helps.