Unable to burn DMG files to CDs on external USB2 disc burners?

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Level 1

121 points

Unable to burn DMG files to CDs on external USB2 disc burners?

Hello.

I am having difficulties burning 88.x MB DMG files to CDs (new CD-Rs and an old CD-RW) onto two different external USB2 disc burner drives (both have power AC connected: HP and LG Super brands). The new Mac Mini (no disc slot drive)'s updated 64-bit Mac OS X 10.7.4's Disk Utilities tries to burn and then fail right away or after a few seconds. The error says "Unable to burn 'whatever.dmg' (The disc drive did not respond properly and can't recover or retry." Nothing interesting in dmesg, but Disk Utility's logs had details: http://pastie.org/private/6tnqcnkwycr2yftp8gkzxw ...

I do see my drives' lights on during the burn. I can quick erase the old CD-RW fine. I can burn 538 MB from an 64-bit Windows 8 on my Acer AM3800 PC with the same discs and external burner drives without any problems. Also, I thought it was my USB cable extension, but it wasn't it. I don't use any USB hubs either. DMG files are fine too. I did notice copying from a CD to Mac Mini's local HDD was slow, but no failures.

What could be the problem? Is USB2 too slow or something? Thank you in advance. 😟

Posted on Jul 5, 2012 1:16 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,141 points

Jul 5, 2012 2:49 PM in response to antdude

Did you look at...

~/Library/Logs/DiscRecording.log

USB2 is slow, but not that slow, but have you tried reducing the burn speed?

At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac, then click on More Info, then click on Hardware>Disk Burning & report what it says, like ...

TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S222L:

Firmware Revision: SB02

Interconnect: ATAPI

Burn Support: Yes (Unsupported)

Profile Path: None

Cache: 2048 KB

Reads DVD: Yes

CD-Write: -R, -RW

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

Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes

Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes

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

Media:

Media Type: DVD-RW

Blank: Yes

Erasable: Yes

Overwritable: Yes

Appendable: Yes

Mac OS X: Cannot print, use Classic, start file sharing, burn discs, or update software if /tmp missing...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA21161?viewlocale=en_US

To avoid these issues, you guessed it, you shouldn't delete the /tmp symbolic link from the Mac OS X volume.

If /tmp is missing, it's easy to make a new one by following these steps:

Mac OS X 10.3 or later

Recreate the missing /tmp link by using the Disk Utility application to repair permissions on your Mac OS X startup volume.

Might try Burn...

http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html

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Answer 2

antdude Author

Level 1

121 points

Jul 5, 2012 3:40 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua wrote:

Did you look at...

~/Library/Logs/DiscRecording.log

USB2 is slow, but not that slow, but have you tried reducing the burn speed?

At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac, then click on More Info, then click on Hardware>Disk Burning & report what it says, like ...

http://pastie.org/4207000 for DiscRecording.log

http://pastie.org/4207021 for Disk Burning's Report.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

239,141 points

Jul 5, 2012 4:04 PM in response to antdude

Can you try a 4x burn?

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Answer 4

antdude Author

Level 1

121 points

Jul 5, 2012 4:08 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua wrote:

Can you try a 4x burn?

Where is the speed setting at? I did not see any? I just used whatever was defaults.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

239,141 points

Jul 5, 2012 4:46 PM in response to antdude

I'm not sure, did you try Burn? I always use Toast or Dragon Burn to burn, which have that setting, no Blank CDs to check if Disk Utilty has a setting, sorry.

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Answer 6

antdude Author

Level 1

121 points

Jul 5, 2012 4:55 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua wrote:

I'm not sure, did you try Burn? I always use Toast or Dragon Burn to burn, which have that setting, no Blank CDs to check if Disk Utilty has a setting, sorry.

No, not yet. Is Burn free?

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

239,141 points

Jul 5, 2012 5:49 PM in response to antdude

Yes, Burn is free, so is a free trial for testing of Dragon Burn...

http://www.nticorp.com/dragon_burn.asp

Not positive it works in 10.7.x, but worth a try.

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Answer 8

antdude Author

Level 1

121 points

Jul 6, 2012 10:28 AM in response to antdude

I did find something about Disk Utility's report on this HP drive: http://pastie.org/4211276 ... UNSUPPORTED for burn? Why? Aren't all USB external burner drives using the same standard technology for disc burning? 😟 Why different results from Apple's System Report?

I also tried the various burn speeds that someone else suggested. It showed me 4X and 10X for HP and CD-RW. Memorex CD-R showed three different speeds (forgot to note them, but who cares), and all failed too. I also tried full erase on that CD-RW and that got stuck (light blink forever). Ugh.

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Answer 9

BDAqua

Level 10

239,141 points

Jul 6, 2012 11:18 AM in response to antdude

No, there's a bunch of differences in how drives burn, even in the order of commands to them, or number of commands.

Dragon Burn has lots of it's own built-in drivers, not relying on the OS, have you tried that yet?

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