HELP! New OS's are driving me nuts!!!

[IWT]

@Mr D

I think in fairness to Admin pigoo3, he probably alluded to this in post #14 (I think), but I think it needs emphasising:

If any of your Macs - most definitely the 24" iMac - came with a built in optical drive; that is to say, a built in CD/DVD player/recorder, then Apple's Super Drive will not work with that Mac - even if the internal CD/DVD drive is broken.

Apple's Super Drive (which I assume you have from your early posts???) will only work with any Mac that did not ship with it's own internal optical drive. That is to say, it will work with the vast majority of recent Macs.

On your 24" iMac, and any other with an internal CD/DVD Drive, you will need a third party CD/DVD player/recorder. These are very cheap nowadays and can be powered from your Mac via a USB cable (provided with the player) attached to a USB port on your Mac.

My point in expanding on this is that your Apple Super Drive may not be broken - if indeed that is what you have.

And may I wish you a Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year, Mr D.

Ian

 

[pigoo3]

If any of your Macs - most definitely the 24" iMac - came with a built in optical drive; that is to say, a built in CD/DVD player/recorder, then Apple's Super Drive will not work with that Mac - even if the internal CD/DVD drive is broken.

Apple's Super Drive (which I assume you have from your early posts???) will only work with any Mac that did not ship with it's own internal optical drive. That is to say, it will work with the vast majority of recent Macs.

On your 24" iMac, and any other with an internal CD/DVD Drive, you will need a third party CD/DVD player/recorder. These are very cheap nowadays and can be powered from your Mac via a USB cable (provided with the player) attached to a USB port on your Mac.

My point in expanding on this is that your Apple Super Drive may not be broken - if indeed that is what you have.

Read my mind exactly Ian.

- Nick

 

[Rocky97]

Could be an issue with your finder preferences file. This seems to be a common issue on Mojave.


In terminal:
cd ~/Library/Preferences (navigate to preferences)
chmod 700 com.apple.finder.plist (correct permissions)
mv com.apple.finder.plist ~/.trash (move to trash)

Now click the Apple icon, click Force Quit, then select Finder.
This should restart Finder. Restart your mac if necessary.

This seems to have fixed the issue for a few people.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...what is the easiest/best new way to put data on a DVD that can't be seen on the desktop? The old method of dragging the data on to the DVD icon is changed.

This just came up on another list.

Under Mojave (macOS 10.14):

Create a folder containing the files you wish to burn onto your optical disk. Right-click or control-click on the folder and choose “Burn…” from the contextual menu that appears.

Several folks confirmed that this works!

 

[Rocky97]

This just came up on another list.

Under Mojave (macOS 10.14):

Create a folder containing the files you wish to burn onto your optical disk. Right-click or control-click on the folder and choose “Burn…” from the contextual menu that appears.

Several folks confirmed that this works!

This is just to burn a file to the disk, not to view the contents of the disk.

 

[pm-r]

Burning data to an optical disk is a fairly reliable way to store data long-term. Putting data on a USB flash drive is a very unreliable long-term way to store data, though it is excellent for short term data storage.

I would really question that these days, especially with the problems of "Disc rot" that's being discovered.

Good quality Flash drives seem to be overtaking the optical disks for more reliable storage.

Purchasing new blank optical disks to back up to is still quite a bit cheaper than backing up to an external hard drive, even though the price of external hard drives has dropped

That only applies to burning a few optical drives and a relatively small amount of data,
Gheese, it would take about 120± double sided disks @ about 8.5GB/disk to equal a 1TB hard drive's capacity one could purchase for $50.00±.


EDIT:
I wonder whatever happened to this great idea:
More data storage? Here’s how to fit 1,000 terabytes on a DVD
More data storage? Here's how to fit 1,000 terabytes on a DVD







- Patrick
======

 

[pm-r]

Apple's Super Drive (which I assume you have from your early posts???) will only work with any Mac that did not ship with it's own internal optical drive. That is to say, it will work with the vast majority of recent Macs.

I'm sure I read somewhere that they had fixed that incompatibility with later models, maybe with firmware, but I don't really know or recall how, but I'm sure they would have missed a lot of units that were already out in stores. But it's also amazed me that people would pay Apple's excessive price for an external optical drive when there were lots of other third-party units that could work just as well if not better for a fraction of the price.





- Patrick
======

 

[pm-r]

This just came up on another list.

Under Mojave (macOS 10.14):

Create a folder containing the files you wish to burn onto your optical disk. Right-click or control-click on the folder and choose “Burn…” from the contextual menu that appears.

This has been standard in Mac OS X for several versions going way back, but I don't think Apple ever improved things in order to do multi-session burning. IE: It only works with a blank disc. But maybe Mojave improved things, but I would be very surprised.





- Patrick
======

 

[Randy B. Singer]

This is just to burn a file to the disk, not to view the contents of the disk.

Exactly. Read the quote from the poster I was responding to.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I would really question that these days, especially with the problems of "Disc rot" that's being discovered.

While optical disks definitely don't last the 100 years that they were originally advertised as lasting, they will last orders of magnitude longer that a USB flash drive. Of course how long they last depends on the technology used. A re-writable optical disk won't last nearly as long as a write-once disk. Though either should handily outlast a USB flash drive.

CDs, DVDs: Human After All
CDs, DVDs: Human After All | WIRED

As with any long term storage method, it's a good idea to have more than one backup and to move your data from one media to another occasionally and to test your backup. You can test optical disk backups with:

CDR Scanner
Sacramento Software Works / George Touchstone Downloads Page

Data storage lifespans: How long will media really last?
https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/

Good quality Flash drives seem to be overtaking the optical disks for more reliable storage.

Theoretically, yes. In practice I wouldn't trust a USB flash drive to store data as a primary back-up, they are built to a price-point and they show it. They are great as a lower tier on a multi-tier back-up plan, though. I often recommend a USB flash drive as a third tier in a multi-tiered backup plan for professionals for just their Documents folder.

 

[chscag]

While optical disks definitely don't last the 100 years that they were originally advertised as lasting, they will last orders of magnitude longer that a USB flash drive. Of course how long they last depends on the technology used. A re-writable optical disk won't last nearly as long as a write-once disk. Though either should handily outlast a USB flash drive.

I have to agree with Randy. I have data that I saved on CDs or DVDs from years ago that is still good. There is no way I would trust a flash drive or a hard drive for long term storage of data. The one thing that needs to be remembered when burning to CDs or DVDs is to use a method of burning that allows the optical media to be read on any optical drive.

 

[Slydude]

The one thing that needs to be remembered when burning to CDs or DVDs is to use a method of burning that allows the optical media to be read on any optical drive.

Good advice there as usual Charlie. I would add one other thing since the topic seems to have urned to long term storage. As you start moving to newer hardware and updating/changing software, think a bit about the file formats that will be used. You may need to periodically import the tata into a new program / convert it to a different format altogether.

I learned this lesson a few years ago. I had several photos stored in a proprietary format used by a plug-in called Genuine Fractals. Somewhere along the way the plug-in stopped working. I don't remember whether I lost the activation code, they updated the plug-in, or exactly what happened. What I do remember is that those files were inaccessible to me. Files created about the same time that were saved as jpg images are still accessible by several programs.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

As you start moving to newer hardware and updating/changing software, think a bit about the file formats that will be used. You may need to periodically import the tata into a new program / convert it to a different format altogether.

That is so true Sly! Over the years I've seen so many folks fail to take this into account. So they ended up with files in Wang, WriteNow, AppleWorks, MacWrite, etc. etc. formats that they couldn't find modern translators for.

 

[Slydude]

Experience is a hard teacher.

What complictes matters is that we often have good reasins for choosing the formats we've chosen. In my case, limited hard drive space, and the cost of additional hard drivespace in the days of clamshell iBooks, made me search for an alternative. This piece of softwre claimed to save images in a format that saved all of the resolution in a format mcuh smaller than say a tiff file.

One of the advantages of having older gear aound is that you can run older software, open these older files, and hopefully save them in a format that newer software can read. This of course assumes the older hardware doesn't die without notice.

 

[MacInWin]

A cautionary tale from back in the days before CD/DVDs: I used to run a data center for the US Navy. We had a set of reels of magnetic tape we were keeping for a lawsuit that had been filed against the Navy about a bonus program that had the names and full records of all the sailors who had been in the bonus program. The idea was that once the suit was resolved, we could rebuild their service history to determine exactly what the bonus would be for these sailors given the outcome of the lawsuit. Every so often we would take the tapes out of storage, clean them, refresh them and verify the data on the tapes, and the put them back into storage. If you didn't do that, the tapes would degrade over time.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs had established their case and tried to add to the number of plaintiffs by increasing the hostility to the Navy over the case (frankly, the Navy was in agreement with the sailors, but was refrained from saying so by the directives of civilian authority, particularly within DoJ). As a result, they claimed that the Navy could not be trusted with the tapes and wanted us to turn them over to the lawyers. The Navy argued that in addition to the litigants, there were on the tape data about other sailors whose bonus eligibility could be impacted by the outcome of the trial and that data should be protected from disclosure. The judge agreed with the sensitivity of the tape, but then directed that the Navy turn over the tapes to him for storage. We cautioned him that routine maintenance was required, but the plaintiffs' lawyers argued that such "maintenance" could mean we destroyed the data (fake news, even then, trying to build up the hostility to the Navy). Against our warnings, the judge issued an order that we hand over the tapes for the court to protect, so we did.

Flash forward three years to the final hearing at the Supreme Court. The lawsuit was settled in favor of the plaintiffs and the judge had the case of tapes hauled out of the court basement and gave it to the DoJ data center to calculate the amount of the final award, based on the data on the tape. The DoJ folks discovered that during the storage time the tapes had degraded to the point of unreadability (just as the we had said they would). In addition, the DoJ did not have a personnel system that could make use of the data on the tapes to calculate the bonus amounts. The judge then had the DoJ contact us to see if anything could be done. Our initial reaction was to tell the DoJ that we had turned over the original tapes to the court as directed but that we had discovered a backup copy, well maintained, of the tapes in our own vault. (Actually, we had made the duplicates before turning over the originals to the court because we knew what was likely to happen, and did.) At that point the judge told us to just process the tapes ourselves to calculate how much to award the plaintiffs, ignoring the plaintiffs' lawyers demands that they get the tapes directly to have that done or that DoJ do it. By this time the judge realized that we were honest folk, and would calculate the numbers correctly. Besides, we had the personnel system in place to actually make use of the data the most efficiently.

So, we calculated the financial impact, gave the results to the judge who then created the fund for the sailors' payouts (minus legal fees, of course) and the GAO sent the money to the fund to be disbursed by the lawyers as they had contracted with the plaintiffs. And the judge learned that there is storage, and then there is storage.

 

[IWT]

Just as an aside, and belatedly, congratulations Jake on passing the 5,000 posts.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

Just as an aside, and belatedly, congratulations Jake on passing the 5,000 posts.

Ian

+1!!!

Almost like two ships passing unnoticed in the night, and your turn is fast approaching Ian.





- Patrick
======

 

[Slydude]

Kudos to both of you gents for reach the 5,000 post milestone.

 

[MacInWin]

*blush* Reaching that milestone just means I pop off about things way too often. But thanks for the recognition.

 

[Slydude]

*blush* Reaching that milestone just means I pop off about things way too often. But thanks for the recognition.

As do I my friend. That's why I keep the dunce cap handy.