Advice on external CD burner.

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Level 3

810 points

Advice on external CD burner.

I'm not really sure just how much duty the built in CD burner on an iMac G5 is supposed to handle. I'm into a project that is going to require than I burn about 25 CDs per day about 5 days per week for the rest of this year. So... I was thinking about just buying a stand alone CD burner and using that.

Here are my questions:

1. What would be a good brand to go with - something that works well with the Mac and seems reliable.

2. Can I use OSX Disk Utility to operate the CD burner with or will I have to install 3rd party software/driver in order to use it.

Haven't done this before and would appreciate any advice anyone here can give. Thanks a ton.

iMac G4, Mac OS X (10.3)

Posted on Sep 21, 2006 7:17 PM

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Answer 1

mhunter

Level 6

9,185 points

Sep 21, 2006 9:24 PM in response to Tom Kirkman

Hello,

Yes, for that kind of volume, you should use an external drive. The internal drive is likely to hold-up as well as anything else. But, and external drive is easier to replace if it fails. I'd consider it more disposable.

I've been using a Sony DVD-R drive, and I've been very happy with it. No problems at all, and it works great. Make sure you get a drive with a FireWire interface for faster data transfer and more reliable burning.

And, get a drive that is rated for 16x or faster with DVD-R media. The slower media is getting harder to find, and not all drives work well with disks rated for higher speeds than the drive directly supports (especially if it is single-speed media).

Also, you should go ahead and get one that supports Dual-Layer disks so that you are prepared for the future if you find the need to burn higher-capacity disks or say 2-hour high-quality movies.

You can use 3rd-party DVD-R drives with OS X's disk utility without any trouble.

Burning from the Finder may require a driver / patch. I'm using the free PatchBurn program to enable 100% compatibility with the Finder (burning disks from folders directly in the Finder):
http://www.patchburn.de/

I hope this helps.

Let us know if you have other questions.

P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

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