I have a DVD of my own material - songs I've written that I burnt some years ago to a DVD. I went to put it back into my system so I could re-work something and I cannot copy anything off of this DVD. I looked at the read/write permissions and it says I only can read off of this disc. This is MY material - I'm a composer - I backed this up to make sure it was safe - now I cannot restore it. Any ideas on how to force my DVD to give me back my music?
2 x 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon,
Mac OS X (10.5.5),
8 GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Optical discs are read-only after you use them. You cannot write to one after you've burned it nor can you change permissions on the disc nor any of its content. You will have to copy the files from the DVD to your hard drive to make any changes. You would then need to burn a new disc in order to save the changed files onto an optical disc.
Hi Kappy, I guess I was unclear. That is what I'm attempting to do. To copy the material from my DVD to my hard drive. It will not let me - I've never run across this problem before. I've backed up many, many DVDs for use later and have never had a problem bringing the material back onto my hard drive. I'm stumped. Any other suggestions?
I get a circle with a line through it - it doesn't matter what destination disc I go to. I have tried internal SATA drives as well as external firewire - nothing.
I can copy anything anywhere else - from Firewire to home drives to USB drives ... it's just this one particular DVD that I burnt, probably 4 years ago, that I cannot get to copy to anything. Darndest thing...
Do you have the same problem while logged in to a different user account?
Also, you can try the old voodoo method of repairing permissions with Disk Utility. I seem to remember it helping me when I was having trouble with reading/writing files on a CD once.
Is it possible you created this DVD from a different user account? If so then it's possible that's why you cannot copy the files. You literally don't have permission to access them unless you were logged in as the same user that created them.
I don't know if this is workable, but select the DVD on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. See if the "Ignore permissions on this volume" box is unchecked. If it is try checking it. Since a DVD is not writable this may not work.
I'm going to lay it out from the top to see if it rings any other bells out there... From about 2002 - 2005 I burnt DVDs of a lot of my audio, Digital Performer files, sequences, Toast CDs, and pretty much everything I was working on at the time - to be available for me to use at a later date. Well, I went to find some old files to pull onto my desktop and many of the DVDs I burnt state that they are "read only" and I cannot have access to the information. These are my own personal files - no third party plugs, no movies, just my own stuff.
I think that these DVDs are DVD-R, not sure if that would have anything to do with it. I've tried copying the entire DVD as well as just individual files - nothing. When I drag it to the desktop, I see a white circle with w line through it. When I drag it to another internal drive or an external firewire drive, it just ignores it.
I've tried things like HandBrake to try to access the info but they are only for movies. I've repaired the disc permissions on my computer. I've tried changing the Permissions but since it is a DVD, that doesn't seem to be possible.
Some DVDs are working. The differences I can see between the ones that work and the ones that do not are that the the 'good' DVDs, that I am able to access, have a box in the Info window that says "encoding." Under "Sharing & Permissions" it only has the words - "You can only read." The Formatting says "Mac OS Standard."
On the 'bad' DVDs, that I am unable to access, there is no "Encoding" protocol. The formatting is "Mac OS Extended." Also, under "Sharing & Permissions," there is a lot more information besides "You can only read." It also has the name (Me) and Privilege - "Read & Write," as well as "(unknown) and Everyone" with their Privilege as "Read only."
I also tried going back to the computer that I originally burnt them on, which was a G5, and I get the same messages.
I am completely stymied. This should have been an easy task and it has turned into a nightmare. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Have you tried reading these DVDs in Toast? I have no idea why you should not be able to access them from what you've described. All DVD/CDs are read-only once they have been used, so there's nothing abnormal about that.
Do these bad DVDs at least mount on the Desktop and can you observe the contents in a Finder window?
The white circle with the line through it just means the action is not permitted.
I am unable to try loading with either Linux or Windows as I don't have easy access to a machine. One new thing to tell. I have an older G4 running OS 9 - I tried one of the discs in there and it copied perfectly. I then transferred them to my Mac Pro running 10.5.6. New problem - what were originally Digital Performer files (MOTU), are now UNIX exec files. I tried changing the Icon preview name but they just won't open. Strange and more strange ...
Why would it even copy without a hitch under OS 9? Maybe I actually burnt the disc from this computer ? And more important - why would the computer change the file type?
Has the computer changed the file type - i.e, actually changed the file, or is it just thinking the file is a unix exec ?
To check this, you can either use 'Get Info' and change the 'open with' box to the application you expected to use, or open an application that you think should read the file, and then try to open the file.
I think it has copied under OS9 because OS9 simply ignored the unix file permissions, which is why I asked about another OS
The Bretonian wrote:
Has the computer changed the file type - i.e, actually changed the file, or is it just thinking the file is a unix exec ?
To check this, you can either use 'Get Info' and change the 'open with' box to the application you expected to use, or open an application that you think should read the file, and then try to open the file.
I think it has copied under OS9 because OS9 simply ignored the unix file permissions, which is why I asked about another OS
I did all that - I changed the App in the Get Info window as well as the icon. I tried opening the file with the application but it does not open so the actual file was changed as far as the computer understands. There is probably a program out there (FileType no longer works under OS X) that can change the file back to what it is, but I cannot find it. I will try to open this under one of those other systems if I can. Thanks for all the tips - much appreciated.
Try the Terminal. Insert the DVD and note the name of the disk on the desktop.
Type the following in the Terminal:
cd /volumes/name
ofdisk
If there are spaces in the name of the DVD, you need to enclose the command in quotes. Like so:
cd "/volumes/name of disk"
Your prompt should show the name of the disk in the current path, followed by your user name. I mounted a disk named "DecoPac" and changed to that volume using the same cd command above. So my path now looks like this:
JKL-Studios-Mac-Pro:decopac jklstudios$
You don't need to do this next part, but type it in anyway just to make sure you're looking at the contents of the DVD. Type in...
ls
... and press Enter. That's a small L before the s. It's the list command, and will simply show you the contents of the disk. You should see the folder and files names of the DVD scroll by.
Create a new folder on the Mac desktop named test. It can be anything you want, but "test" will then match the command I've noted next that you'll use to copy the data off the DVD to the hard drive.
Now type in, or copy/paste this command into the Terminal:
sudo cp * ~/desktop/test/
The Terminal will ask for your user account password before it will execute a sudo (Super User DO) command. This should allow the Terminal to ignore any permissions and copy everything (the * argument) to the hard drive in the folder named test.
Assuming there are no errors in what you type, the copy should start. Nothing will appear to happen in the Terminal until the copy is done. Then it will simply move to the next prompt.
