Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Burning CDs and DVDs

Who misses the floppy drive anymore? A blank CD holds at least 450 times as many files, and a blank DVD holds about 3,250 times as many!

You can buy blank CDs incredibly cheaply in bulk—$20for100discs, for example—via the Web. (To find the best prices, visit www.shopper.com or www.buy.com and search for blank CD-R.) Blank DVDs are only slightly more expensive—about $30 for 100.

Burning a CD or DVD is great for backing stuff up, transferring stuff to another computer (even a Windows PC), mailing to somebody, or offloading (archiving) older files to free up hard drive space.

You can burn a disc in either of two ways: with the blank disc inserted or without.

Burn Folders: Without the Disc

The burn folder is a special folder that you fill up by dragging file and folder icons to it. Then, when you're ready to burn, you just insert the blank disc and go.

UP TO SPEED: Mac OS Extended Formatting

Whether you use Disk Utility to erase a disk (or when you first install Mac OS X and elect to erase the hard drive in the process), you'll be confronted with a choice between formatting options called Mac OS Extended and UNIX File System (UFS). (Depending on the kind of disk, you may also see an option to create a DOS-formatted disk for use in Windows machines.)

Mac OS Extended or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) refers to the HFS Plus filing system, a disk format that has been proudly maximizing disk space for Mac fans since Mac OS 8.1. (For a definition of journaling, see Erase & Install ...