Cannot BackUp Twice to CD-RW - Why?

[BeeS4335]

I'm a absolute Newbie to the Mac. Today, I almost lost something I've spent days working on so I thought I'd try to avoid that happening again. I have a box of brand new CD-RW. I opened one, loaded it, dragged the folder to the CD icon on the desktop, then "burned". All seemed good. Went back to work at the end of which thought well I'll backup again. No can do! The CD tells me I cannot do this because the "CD >>name<< Cannot Be Modified". In all innocence perhaps, I thought one could write many times to a CD with RW on it. Anyway, I'd be very grateful for advice & my apologies if I'm asking a really dumb question. In case it helps, mine is a MacBook Air & I'm using the MBA Superdrive

 

[72930]

http://freeridecoding.com/burnagainfs/

 

[chscag]

A CDRW disk is no different than any other type of disk once a session is "closed" or finalized as it can no longer be written to. That's what happened after you burned the first set of data to the disk, the session was closed and the disk finalized. That applies whether you're burning from OS X or Windows. The difference of course with a CDRW is that it can be erased and written to again.

To do multiple writing to a CDRW, CDR, or DVD media you must select "multi-session" writing and make sure you do NOT finalize the media after burning.

You didn't mention which program you were using to do the burning, but most good software for both OS X and Win allow for multi-session burning.

Regards.

 

[BeeS4335]

Well, thank you both. It all appears to be much more complicated than I thought. I haven't installed any special software for writing/burning or whatever to CD-RW. Stupidly, in retrospect, I suppose I thought that would be built into my MacBook Air. After dragging the folder to the CD-RW icon, I was only given the option to burn so far as I can recall. So there must be some primitive software on board. However, there was nothing said about multi-session or finalising or anything else. Goodness, surely when I've spent all this money on an Apple Mac machine I don't have to rush out to buy software so I can copy stuff to a CD and then update it periodically!? Anyway, thanks again for helping me.

 

[theLimit]

CD technology was never meant for multiple writes, so programs that can write multiple sessions are needed to achieve this.

DVD-RAM discs can do what you want, acting as a hard-drive like rewritable disc, but only if your computer supports it. Another option is a USB flash drive, they are cheap, reliable, and work on nearly any computer with a USB port.