Using a dedicated burning program gives you the flexibility to burn audio, data, and video files to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Burning media in this way opens up a lot of possibilities for using and storing your digital media.
PCMag reviews products, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Why are you still burning stuff onto CDs?
But you're here, so you must really want to do this thing, so let's get into it. In today's mobile, always-connected world, there are plenty of quality free online cloud storage options such as or, not to mention the media storage options from,. But, I suppose, if you really want to make sure your data is accessible and/or not being snooped on, you need a hard local backup.
That's actually pretty smart. There are plenty of good, and even some beefy thumb drives. But for some reason, you really, really still want to use a CD. I'm not here to judge, only to assist. So, first thing is make sure that your computer has a burn-ready drive or you have access to an external CD burner. And then get yerself some writable CDs.
They're super cheap these days. You can burn an audio CD or stuff it with data. There are plenty of software packages out there, but let's start with what's probably already on your computer. Windows First, let's talk to. Just slip the disc into the CD tray, which will prompt an AutoPlay dialog box. If you want to fill the disc with files (as opposed to making an audio CD, which we'll get to later), click 'Burn files to disc using Windows Explorer.' In the subsequent 'Burn a Disc' dialog box, type a name for the disc in the 'Disc title' field.
Click which format you want for the disc: either the more-versatile and re-workable Live File System (AKA 'Like a USB Drive') or the one-time Master system (AKA 'With a CD/DVD player'). You can find more information on which format to choose.
Then click 'Next.' All you have to do then is double-click the file on your desktop and drag and drop the files you wish to burn into the empty CD.
If you formatted the disc using the Live File System ('Like a USB Drive'), then all you have to do is close out by clicking on Close session on the toolbar. If you chose the one-time Mastered format (AKA 'With a CD/DVD player'), you'll have to click the 'Burn to disc' button in the toolbar and follow the steps in the Wizard from there. If you are creating an audio CD, you would have chosen 'Burn an audio CD' in the original AutoPlay prompt. This will open the Windows Media Player, which has a simple drag-and-drop window to order the tracks as you would like them.
You can find more specifics about this process. Then when you're happy with it, just click the 'Start' button.
Conversely, you can also use iTunes, which we'll explore below. On a Mac If you're burning data, just slip that writeable bad boy in. Drag and drop the files into the disc icon on your desktop. Choose File Burn disc and follow directions from there.
If you want to burn an audio CD, you'll have to do that (you can also do that on the Windows version of iTunes). First, click on the iTunes Preferences Burning tab and select 'Audio CD.' Next, arrange all the songs you'd like to burn into a playlist (you can only burn from a playlist). Highlight the playlist and then click the Burn Disk icon in the top-right corner. Soon you'll be swooning to Boyz II Men and Jesus Jones tracks on your super sweet new CD. Have fun with that.
2007: One of the biggest hassles of the vintage Macintosh hobby is loading software onto your first older Mac. To get that vintage Mac up-and-running, you need to be able to write downloaded software onto disks that an older Mac can read. And that’s what we’ll talk about: Free tools for writing Mac floppy disks and HFS CD-ROMs using modern Mac, Windows, and Linux computers. Floppy Disk Images Installing or onto an older Mac is only possible using floppy disks, and the first step to installing System 7.5 is usually “boot from a floppy”. These floppies are distilled into disk images you can download from the Web.
When written to a floppy, these images create exact copies of the master disks. Due to physical differences between Mac and PC floppy drives, 800K double density Mac floppies can only be written by other vintage Macs. This means that boot disks for a, or cannot be made on a Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows machine.
(All other vintage Macs have a 1.4 MB SuperDrive or FDHD Floppy Disk, High Density floppy drive, which is compatible with modern computers.) StuffIt Expander Many sources of Mac floppy disk images distribute them in StuffIt (.sit) format. Before these disk images can be written onto real floppy disks, they must be decompressed with.
This free program is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux/i386. If StuffIt Expander isn’t available, attempt to find the necessary disk image in uncompressed Disk Copy 4.2 format. These will be immediately useful without any decompression. I’m currently cooking up some Mac boot floppies that will make installing System software a breeze. I hope to make them available soon using Disk Copy 4.2 format for maximum cross-platform convenience. Writing a Floppy Disk from an Image Classic Mac OS With Mac OS 9 and earlier, just use, which you can freely download from Apple.
From the Utilities menu, choose Make a Floppy and follow the directions onscreen. Windows The Windows utility can be used to write image files to a floppy using a PC.
Put the disk image file and Rawrite into drive C, open a DOS window, type C: Rawrite, and follow the directions. For more information, read.
Linux Linux users can use the “dd” command to write floppies from image files. If the image file is a raw image, a simple “dd if=pathtoimagefile of=pathtofloppydrive” will do the trick. For a DiskCopy image, “dd if=pathtoimagefile of=pathtofloppydrive bs=84 skip=1” is the right way,. Mac OS X At this time, I am not aware of a good, user-friendly way to write floppies from disk images using Mac OS X.
Highly advanced users will probably be able to connect a USB floppy drive, determine its device node, and use the method outlined above for Unix-like systems. Readers with further information are encouraged to email their stories or techniques so we can update this article. The Mac’s HFS File System Before we talk about how to burn CDs for older Macs, it’s important to understand why it’s sometimes difficult. It has to do with the way the Mac stores its files using the HFS file system.
A Macintosh file has two “forks” inside it, the Data Fork and the Resource Fork. The Data Fork is like a file on any other computer system, and it’s where universal data (like MP3 songs, JPEG pictures, and plain text) reside. The Resource Fork is a special part that other computers lack.
It stores various objects (such as icons, window and menu definitions, and sounds) and helps to make the Mac a Mac. With the right software, it’s possible to teach other computer systems about the Mac’s resource fork; I don’t consider it to be worth the effort. We’ll focus on how to burn HFS CDs containing data-only files, such as Internet downloads. It’s much more sensible to let the older Mac decode them itself than to try to do it on a modern computer. Burning HFS CD-ROMs Classic Mac OS The Classic Mac OS makes this easy – every CD burning application has an obvious “HFS” format option.
It’s usually the default choice. Even the built-in Disc Burner that comes with Mac OS 9 can make HFS CDs that work with System 7 Macs. Mac OS X Mac OS X speaks HFS, though it has mostly abandoned it for the newer format. To burn a System 7-compatible HFS CD in OS X, first create a new disk image using Disk Utility. Select it in the left-side list and click on the Erase tab. Choose Mac OS Standard from the Volume Format dropdown and click the Erase button.
Now copy the files of your choice onto the disk image. When you’re done, unmount the disk image by selecting it and choosing Eject.
Enter Disk Utility again and use the Burn Image command to create an HFS-formatted CD readable by all old Macs. Update: This article was written before. It and later versions of OS X cannot create disk images compatible with vintage Macs, although they can burn CDs from existing compatible disk images. And earlier can create compatible disk images. Windows Windows can create HFS CDs using free software called. Although the program’s homepage seems to have gone offline, you can find it on archive.org.
Once you’ve unpacked the software, choose New Image from the File menu. Name your image file and choose an appropriate size. HFVExplorer’s user interface is modeled after Windows Explorer, so it’s easy to copy the files of your choice onto the CD image. Once you’ve copied the files, quit HFVExplorer. Change the.DSK filename extension to.ISO and write it to CD using your favorite CD burning application.
Linux The Linux utility mkisofs (from the cdrtools package) has options to create HFS CDs. The easiest way to master your CD begins with putting all the files into a directory. The command “mkisofs -hfs -magic -o maccd.iso directory” will create an HFS CD image in maccd.iso. Then you can burn the.iso file in the standard way. Read “man mkisofs” for more information on the many advanced options.
Conclusion With this information, nearly any modern computer can be used to write floppy disks and burn HFS CDs for use with a vintage Mac. Internet downloads can open a new vista of usefulness for these older Macs. Buy some floppy disks or warm up your CD burner and get ready to put those old machines to good use. Keywords: #makemacfloppies #burnmaccds Short link: searchword: makemacfloppies, burnmaccds.