What am I doing wrong? Trying to burn data to disc.

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linda2009 Author

Level 1

75 points

What am I doing wrong? Trying to burn data to disc.

I have a Mac Mini with SL 10.6.8 with a Super-drive (System profiler shows it to be:

HL-DT-ST DVDRW GA32N:

Firmware Revision: KC12

Interconnect: ATAPI

Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)

Cache: 1024 KB

Reads DVD: Yes

CD-Write: -R, -RW

DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW

Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

Media: To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose View > Refresh

I have a folder on my desktop with various files in it, mostly documents, some clipart and some fonts - stuff like that. All of it under 600mb, able to fit on a 700mb disk.

So I choose to burn this folder to a cd-r 52x, 700mb. I right click and say burn AEFONTS to disc.... insert blank CD, it goes throught the whole process and burns it and verifies it. It shows up on the desktop, I open it and see the files there. All looks okay. So I eject the disk. I delete the folder I copied. Then I re-insert the newly burned disk and a dialog box pops up and says that the disk is BLANK??

So I eject the disk, insert it in my MacBook with SL 10.6.8 with a Super-drive (System profiler shows it to be:

OPTIARC DVD RW AD-5970H:

Firmware Revision: 3AP9

Interconnect: ATAPI

Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)

Cache: 2048 KB

Reads DVD: Yes

CD-Write: -R, -RW

DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW

Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO

Media: To show the available burn speeds, insert a disc and choose View > Refresh

The MacBook shows the files on the CD!! All of them are there. It does not tell me that the disk is blank.

So, what am I doing wrong?? I test all kinds of CD's and DVD's in the MacMini and they all read okay. I don't know what I've done wrong - 2X now. I don't want to keep burning CD's to figure it out.

Does anyone have a clue as to what's going on??

Thanks - any help appreciated!!

mac mini, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, 500 GB

Posted on Mar 19, 2012 4:47 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

linda2009 Author

Level 1

75 points

Mar 19, 2012 6:20 PM in response to linda2009

Ah, ha! I think I found my issue/problem. Not positive, but it's looking like this is the problem - I'll keep testing it.

I logged in as Guest to see if it happened under a Guest account. I inserted the disk and it showed up on the desktop with all the data.

Okay, so something I'm loading is interfering. My first guess was a nifty little program called TOTAL FINDER. Now this little program is really nice, let's me have tabbed finder windows copying stuff from one tab to the other and not too expensive either.

So I took it out of my Login Items (I didn't actually uninstall it, but I made sure it doesn't load when logging into my account). I logged out and logged back in again. The finder window was normal, just basic Mac OS. So I inserted the disk and it showed up on the desktop with all the data!!

So it appears that TOTAL FINDER is interfering with something - either when the disk gets created or after. Funny thing, my MacBook also has Total Finder loaded and the disk works just fine on it. But, I did not create the Disk on the MacBook, so it makes me think that TOTAL FINDER messed with something while creating the disk, or when I copied files over to the burn folder?? What exactly happened I will never know. But removing Total Finder seems to make the CD-R show up on the desktop and work okay. I'm going to keep testing it, but at this point Total Finder seems to be the issue.

Hope this helps someone else, too.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

239,219 points

Mar 19, 2012 7:09 PM in response to linda2009

Great work, thanks for the tip! 🙂

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Answer 3

petermac87

Level 5

7,447 points

Mar 19, 2012 10:30 PM in response to linda2009

linda2009 wrote:

Okay, so something I'm loading is interfering. My first guess was a nifty little program called TOTAL FINDER. Now this little program is really nice, let's me have tabbed finder windows copying stuff from one tab to the other and not too expensive either.

Yep, another case of a Third Party program interfering with the running of the OSX. Very common. Unfortunately the poor old Apple developers cop the blame for all these issues, despite constant reminders about the issues that can be caused by installing certain Third Parties.

Glad you are back up and running

Pete

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Answer 4

linda2009 Author

Level 1

75 points

Mar 19, 2012 10:41 PM in response to petermac87

Well, Total Finder is a neat little app and basically I used it every day! And, I had no troubles. Strangely, the MacBook reads the "questionable" disk just fine and it had Total Finder, too.

Anyway, as I said, I did not un-install it. But, it started to act up again, on one disk particularly. So I used Total Finder's uninstall app and removed it. Then I used Tinker Tool (which is a 3rd party app that I just can't do without) to remove all my cache files and Reset my Permissions, check my preference files for errors, etc. Then I rebooted and it seems to be reading the disk now.

So I uninstalled TF from the MacBook, too. I'm sad, I really, really liked that program. Not all 3rd party apps are bad, you know. I loved the tabbed finders windows. Soooo handy. It will make my day to day work harder without it.

I hear Lion has those... I can't bear to upgrade to Lion right now (some features I don't like at all).

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Answer 5

fairflow

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2012 12:43 PM in response to linda2009

I found that relaunching the Finder (by right-clicking on the (Total)Finder icon while holding down the option key and selecting Relaunch) sorted out that particular problem: no need to remove TotalFinder from startup items or to uninstall it.

I've now got another problem (maybe dust on my dvd drive) but it isn't related...trying (a) a disk cleaner and if that fails (b) compressed air.

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Answer 6

linda2009 Author

Level 1

75 points

Nov 16, 2012 3:05 PM in response to fairflow

Hello fairflow.

Funny that you should post now. Months now down the road and about a month ago I started having trouble with the superdrive again. I don't have total finder anymore. But, after testing and re-testing with an external cd/dvd drive, I found out the superdrive was faulty. Took the unit into Apple and they installed new drive and I've been testing as much as I can without just wasting discs and so far it's working without any glitches. So, when I had trouble months ago, it might have been the start of the drive breaking.

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Answer 7

fairflow

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2012 3:45 PM in response to linda2009

Hey Linda,

I think that's what happening to me. In the middle of every dvd burn, the drive "loses data connection" with my macbook which sounds ominous :-(( I've burned through 1/2 my dvd's and think the next step is to get hold of an external drive and test on that. Ah well. I guess it was worth a try; funny thing is that cd burning isn't a problem.

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Answer 8

linda2009 Author

Level 1

75 points

Nov 16, 2012 9:49 PM in response to fairflow

Yes, I had that symptom, too. Seemed to work better with CD's. Although, at the end I started having some trouble with the cd's too. But at first cd burning was working okay.

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