I have a white MacBook and want to burn something to a DVD but it is too big. I have an external DVD burner (LG GSA-E60L 20x DVD±RW DL USB 2.0 External Drive) that does dual layer burning but am not sure how to use it on my mac. Can I just plug it in and use Toast Titanium to burn?
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Burn DL DVD w/ external DVD burner on MacBook
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Mac Disc Burning
Macs use the Disc Burning architecture, a library of settings and binaries in the system, to burn discs. If your burner conforms to a set of settings that can be read and matched to that architecture, it will burn just fine.
There are a few caveats though. First, you have to have a full 512 of ram free at the time of burning for DVD, 256 for cd (I'm not talking total ram of system, I'm talking actually freed up ram). Since your system will use most of your ram with modern OSX and any other apps open, you'd best follow a few cleanups before you start burning. Download a program that will clean your root and user caches. Clean them and try burning. Once the caches are cleaned, they are no longer taking up space in memory, and only changes are passed to drives. Now make sure you have the same amount of space free on your HD as the disc you wish to burn (DVD is 4.3gb for macs, and dl is 8.2gb; other sizes are normalized). CHeck if your drive supports buffer under run prevention, and if so you are golden. If not, there may be issues later. If you burn with an app, select buffer settings that match your drive, and if you use the main system, you should be able to find a Terminal command that includes it.
Macs use the Disc Burning architecture, a library of settings and binaries in the system, to burn discs. If your burner conforms to a set of settings that can be read and matched to that architecture, it will burn just fine.
There are a few caveats though. First, you have to have a full 512 of ram free at the time of burning for DVD, 256 for cd (I'm not talking total ram of system, I'm talking actually freed up ram). Since your system will use most of your ram with modern OSX and any other apps open, you'd best follow a few cleanups before you start burning. Download a program that will clean your root and user caches. Clean them and try burning. Once the caches are cleaned, they are no longer taking up space in memory, and only changes are passed to drives. Now make sure you have the same amount of space free on your HD as the disc you wish to burn (DVD is 4.3gb for macs, and dl is 8.2gb; other sizes are normalized). CHeck if your drive supports buffer under run prevention, and if so you are golden. If not, there may be issues later. If you burn with an app, select buffer settings that match your drive, and if you use the main system, you should be able to find a Terminal command that includes it.
