Archiving to DVD

[livelikeriley]

Hey, I had a question - I want to archive my 8gb cards to DVD, I have a dual-layer burner but no dual-layer disks, I.d rather split the files and make 2 regular DVDs as I have a million of those lying around - I.m on a mac, is there any good program/method for doing this?

Thanks,
Mark.

 

[bbalser]

The new version of Toast, I think it's 8.0, has a back up feature that will span data across several disks.

 

[Ted Spencer]

Since there aren't likely to be a particularly large number of files on even an 8GB card at 720/24PN - maybe few dozen or so - it should be relatively easy to simply drag and drop them into Toast (or whatever) in two batches, half in each. Toast will show you immediately how close you are to the 4.4 GB limit of a single-sided DVD so you can quickly add or remove files until you're close enough.

Or before burning you could make two sub-folders in the finder and use command-i (get info) to see the size as you drag files into them until you reach the right amount in each.

Doing it manually rather than having Toast split it up for you also allows you to determine which files go on which disc if you want to organize them in some particular way.

Either way, it shouldn't take but a minute or so to get the right amounts split up. I'd probably do it manually even if I had the version of Toast that does it automatically, which I don't (yet). At least I think I would... : )

 

[bbalser]

If you have something that does a real back up copy, it's compressing the data to get more mileage out of your media. Dedicated back up software compresses, it doesn't just do a straight mirror copy. Restoring will require the archive to uncompress itself. But dedicated backup software catalogs, so you stick the disk in, and it shows you a catalog of what's in the archive.

Toast 8 ships with Deja Vu, as well as TiVO Transfer. Although the Disc label printing app is pretty lame. Spend the money and get Discus, WAY the best VHS and Optical Disk packaging layout software around. But Toast 8 is really worth it. Much needed improvements in performance.

I'm in process of selecting a back up tape drive dedicated to archiving my stuff, with a dedicated backup application. Most reliable archiving method with high capacity per tape. I figure, I'm now shooting tapeless, I have no video tape of any sort to archive to, without spending a ton of cash. Gotta get with the tapeless video program. Archiving digitally is a MAJOR concern.

Most Mac users I think have Toast already to burn their DVDSP final builds to. Upgrading to 8 is just worth it for the better performance and added features.