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CD and DVD burning are much faster.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T h e   R o a d   L e s s   T r a v e l e d
At last, effective CD and DVD burning is built into Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)


Sept. 28, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is a lot smarter than previous versions of OS X when it burns CDs and DVDs. Instead of creating a stand-in for the disk you are about to burn, Tiger merely uses aliases for the files and folders it's going to put on the CD or DVD.
   This makes CD and DVD burning much faster and takes up a great deal less space -- as much as 4.2 gigabytes less space when you're creating data DVDs.
   Apple calls the new method Burn Folders. The idea is simple: When you want to burn something onto a CD or DVD, you create aliases (pointers) to the files and folders you want to burn and store those aliases in a special location. That location is called a Burn Folder.
   Apple makes this as simple as possible. You make a Burn Folder by right clicking (or Ctrl-Clicking) on the desktop or inside a folder and choosing "New Burn Folder."
   When you're ready to burn the disk, you put a blank CD or DVD into your burner and right click (or Ctrl-Click) the Burn Folder. From the options, choose Burn Disk.
   That's how simple it is. You don't have to burn a disk from a Burn Folder right away, of course; you can store the Burn Folder in any location and turn it into a CD or DVD weeks later, if you want. (OS X will even update the aliases if any of the original files or folders are moved in the interim -- one of the coolest features of OS X and something Windows users who graduate to OS X should consider amazing.)
   Before Tiger came along, the built-in method of burning CDs and data DVDs was so basic that many users probably never got past their first awkward attempt. (Dedicated burning software such as Toast and Dragon Burn probably came to the rescue of many frustrated OS X users.)
   The prior method went like this: You put a blank CD or DVD in the burner, then drag items to it until it is full. You give it a name, then tell OS X to burn it. Until the burn is finished, your Mac has two disks -- the blank one that is being recorded and the virtual one that is being turned into a CD or DVD.
   That's why I said earlier that the method Tiger uses saves disk space. The pre-Tiger method creates a virtual CD or DVD first, then copies it to the disk it's burning. This can take up an extra 650 to 700 megabytes for CDs and as much as 4.2 gigabytes extra space for DVDs. OS X recovers the space afterwards, but your system could stumble if it is already low on space.
   More important is the way Tiger's method makes everything faster. Making a Burn Folder takes only a few seconds, even for one that represents 4 gigabytes of items. After all, OS X is only making pointers.
   After you use a Burn Folder to record a CD or DVD, you can store it somewhere out of the way for use later or you can delete it. (You'd only be deleting the aliases, not the original files and folders.) Burn Folders take up almost no space, so don't be afraid to make a separate folder inside your Documents folder called Burn Folders to store any you might use later.
   They could be a handy part of a backup routine that way. Since they are aliases, the items inside a Burn Folder can point to files and folders that have changed and need backing up. (An example: Your Apple Mail files could be aliased in a Burn Folder, which could be used every few days to back up your mail.)