Subject: Re: Burning ISOs: Windows vs Mac
From: johnathan spectre (jspectre@lords.com)
Date: Fri Sep 07 2001 - 13:03:46 MDT
in my many years of burning cd's (I remember when blank cdr's were $15 a pop
and boy did I hate making coasters...) I've never had a problem burning iso
images using Toast (from 1.x thru the current Toast Titanium 5.02) on my
Mac. I've used PC burners, linux burner, other mac burners and still I like
Toast the best for it's power and simplicity. I've gone through many
manufacturers of CDR/CDRW/DVDR drives, media and interfaces (fyi: most
firewire & usb drives are really IDE drives with a bridge board).
My recommendations:
1. If you're on a Mac use Toast. If you don't own it, it's definitely worth
the investment. If you're buying a new drive some times it comes with a
light version of Toast or you're given an option to purchase it, do so.
Discribe, the only other big name software, doesn't come close.
2. Use quality, name-brand media. I have made thousands of CD's. You may
save a few bucks buying Comp-USA's media that the salesperson swears is made
by 3M/Verbatim/elves. It's not. Bulk buys are great, just make sure you get
a quality name.
3. Hold a disc up to the light, if you can see through it, forget it. Color
of the disc doesnąt matter, blue, green, silver, gold. I've never found one
to be better or worse.
4. Treat the discs very carefully. CDR's are pretty sturdy but I've found
even slight scratches on CDRW's can ruin the disc.
5. If you download a Toast image, ISO image or some other image. Do _not_
use your burning software to "mount" the image so you can take a look at it
before you burn it, if you do make sure it's a copy. This is especially
important on Mac images. Mounting the disc can remove the boot information
from the image. It will burn and verify using Toast but it won't boot any
longer.
6. Whatever drive you use, make sure you have a name-brand mechanism inside.
Yamaha has been my favorite for the past few years and I've purchased
several of their models. My experience with Sony drives has been favorable.
My latest purchase (a week ago) is a Matshita UJDA710 DVD/CDRW combo drive
for my Pismo, works great. I went through 4 drives by Philips many years ago
(2 drives both replaced twice under warranty) and would never buy one of
theirs again. Look around on the web, everyone is selling drives, USB,
FireWire, and bare drives. If you're the do-it-yourself type you can save a
few bucks buying a bare EIDE drive and a case with the bridge-board of your
choice (again get name brand here, if you're going FireWire don't get
anything other than an Oxford 911 chip). None of the "big name"
manufacturers (Que, APS, Iomega, etc.) make the mechanism, they just package
it up and sell it. Find out what is in the drive before you buy it. If you
haven't heard of the brand, search the web for info. MacFixIt.com is a good
place to read about other's troubles with drives.
7. Do not burn a disc at faster than disc's stated rate. Faster discs use
materials that cool down after being burnt faster. If you burn a slower
rated disc at a high speed the dye layer might not cool as fast before the
laser hits the sector right next to it possibly causing errors.
8. Don't play Quake while burning in the background. No matter how fast your
system, bus, connections are. Be sensible. Web surf, read email, but avoid
doing CPU intensive activities if you're going to burn in the background
(which I do all the time). Even with large-buffer "burn proof" drives, if
you hog the CPU for too long you will run out of data going to the drive and
end up with a bad disc. In general the higher the speed I burn at the less I
do on the system. My fastest CDRW drive right now is a 24x and I don't do
anything on the system when burning that fast. If I'm going to do some work
I'll slow down the burn so the data feed can keep up.
Well this has gotten long enough.. Hope these tips help some people. Feel
free to comment or ask me specific questions. Oh, and I have successfully
downloaded, burned and booted the YDL 2.0 cd's, so I know they work.
-js
on 9/7/01 1:16 PM, Pete Peters at ppeters914@home.com wrote:
> I am concerned about burning CDs to use on my Mac, and would appreciate
> further comments from those of you have experience in this area. Please
> be specific as to what OS, interface (EIDE, SCSI, USB, Firewire),
> brand/model CDRW, and burning software.
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