Skip to Main Content
Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition
book

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

by David Pogue
September 2012
Beginner content levelBeginner
762 pages
29h 25m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Burning CDs and DVDs

Burning a CD or DVD is great for backing up stuff, 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 buy blank CDs and DVDs incredibly cheaply in bulk—$20 for 100 CDs, for example—via the Web.

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.

The burn-folder concept has a lot going for it:

  • No wasted hard drive space. When you use a burn folder, you’re not using up any additional disk space as you load up a disc with files and folders. Instead, the Mac just sets aside aliases of the files and folders you want to burn. Aliases take up negligible hard drive space. When you finally burn the disc, the designated material is copied directly onto the CD or DVD.

  • Easy reuse. You can keep a burn folder on your desktop, prestocked with the folders you like to back up. Each time you burn a disc, you get the latest version of those folders’ contents, and you’re saved the effort of having to gather them each time.

  • Prepare ahead of time. You can get a CD or DVD ready to burn without having a blank disc on hand.

Here’s how you use burn folders:

  1. Create a burn folder.

    To make a burn folder appear on your desktop, choose File→New Burn Folder. To create one ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

David Pogue

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449338978Supplemental ContentErrata Page