Making a disc image to use on another mac?

[budha]

I have a few programs on their original DVD discs that I want to put on another computer w/ a broken disc drive. In theory, can I create a disc image w/ the disc utility program, copy that file onto an external hard drive, and then put it on the other computer that way and have the program as workable "disc" (but it will really just be the image of the disc).

On a side note, if I got a new disc drive on that computer, would I still be able to burn that file to a DVD disc in the future to create an exact replica?

I really appreciate your help.

 

[Hierotochan]

I have a few programs on their original DVD discs that I want to put on another computer w/ a broken disc drive. In theory, can I create a disc image w/ the disc utility program, copy that file onto an external hard drive, and then put it on the other computer that way and have the program as workable "disc" (but it will really just be the image of the disc).

On a side note, if I got a new disc drive on that computer, would I still be able to burn that file to a DVD disc in the future to create an exact replica?

I really appreciate your help.

That's basically it.
And yes, you could burn the iso to a disk, or use it in it's current format.
Some things work better burned though, data transfer rates Etc.

 

[BlueRevolution]

Absolutely, although Disk Utility only supports .dmg and .cdr images. (Yes, it will also create .sparseimage and .sparsebundle files, but those formats wouldn't be of use.) If your other computer is a Mac, that wouldn't be a problem. If it's a PC, you can use the free dmg2img to create a Windows-readable version of the disk image. The .dmg format is proprietary to Apple, but I'm not sure about .cdr or its support on the Windows side.

 

[madog]

Absolutely, although Disk Utility only supports .dmg and .cdr images. (Yes, it will also create .sparseimage and .sparsebundle files, but those formats wouldn't be of use.) If your other computer is a Mac, that wouldn't be a problem. If it's a PC, you can use the free dmg2img to create a Windows-readable version of the disk image. The .dmg format is proprietary to Apple, but I'm not sure about .cdr or its support on the Windows side.

You should be able to convert a .cdr to .iso in Windows (by just changing the extension) and be able to burn it properly. As far as I know, the .cdr is just and uncompressed image of the disk, similar to .iso. (That's a statement I've seen used many times, but have not been able to confirm it myself or through Google, I'm planning on it though)

For any installation that doesn't check for its existence in the drive, using DU images will work just fine. Games and other more copyrighted installs won't work without the disk in the drive [...].

On a side note, Blue, go to work!

Edit: not going to search for it now, but there is a Terminal command line you can use to change a dmg to make it an .iso, which is probably what that app Blue mentioned does, if your into that sort of thing.

 

[BlueRevolution]

On a side note, Blue, go to work!

Freelance work and a light class schedule is a nice combination.

Edit: not going to search for it now, but there is a Terminal command line you can use to change a dmg to make it an .iso, which is probably what that app Blue mentioned does, if your into that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think that's the one you're thinking of. I've heard that the .toast format can also be converted to .iso by renaming, but I've never tried.

 

[mikejtl]

I have a similar situation except that a few of my apps I don't have the install disks for. I just bought a new mac. It's my fret intel mac and it was reccomended that I not use migration assistant. But there are a couple of apps that came with my iBook eg. Quicken and appleworks that I would like to bring over. The problem is that when I stick my ibook install cd in the new mac it won't let me install those apps. So is there a way to burn dmgs or CDs of those installed apps on so I can reinstall them on my new mac?