My Burner Won't Be Recognized

T

Tyaak

Registered
Hi,

We have been running 10.3.8 for a while. Most things have been backed up using USB sticks to other computers.

Today I have been trying to burn a complete copy of the hard disk onto Cd's, but the computer tells me that it no longer
recognises the the unit as a writable unit.

It is a Sony CD-RW CRX320E I down tried the software Patch burn but with no joy at the end.

Any suggestions, before OSX it burned fine.

Thanks Eric
 
Hi Tyaak.
First of all, you will not be able to burn a copy of Max OSX directly to CD/DVD AT ALL. This is partly to do with the operating system being in use, and also because there are many special hidden and restricted access files that your CD burning software will not be able to access DIRECTLY.

To make a complete backup of your Operating system THAT WILL WORK, you'll need to use a program such as CarbonCopyCloner or similar that is able to duplicate the boot volume in the correct way. You will also need to have enough space on your hard drive, or, ideally, a second drive, to 'clone' your boot volume to.

As you are preparing to burn this backup of your boot volume to DVD (no way will it fit on a CD unless you are making a VERY stripped down recovery CD), I would recommend you use Disc Utility to make a Disc Image slightly larger than the current contents of the boot volume you are going to backup. Then use CarbonCopyCloner (or equivalent) to clone your boot volume into that disc image. This is important, as you will be burning this disc image FILE to DVD once you've unmounted it, rather than trying to burn the file system contents (unless you are making a bootable disc, as follows).

If you follow the instructions carefully, CarbonCopyCloner can also make a BOOTABLE DVD or your backup. If you add CarbonCopyCloner to the Disk image before burning it as well, you will be able to boot from that DVD AND use CarbonCopyCloner to later CLONE THE CONTENTS BACK should you need to restore from that backup.

It IS fiddly, but it works.
 
I don't think he wanted to clone the harddrive onto one CD-R. He wanted to back up everything to CDs instead of USB sticks. The problem he's talking about, however, is that the specific CD burner isn't recognised as a CD-R/CD-RW anymore.

Question: Did it previously work in Mac OS X or just in OS 9? (I didn't quite get that, I guess...)
 
Thanks for the replies,

Yes the problem is that the burner wont be recognized at all, well kind of sort of...

After posting the other day I did suceed in getting it to burn some back up files (perhaps the whole box and Dice was a bit ambitious)

Yet when I look up the device in "about this mac" it still says it is not not a writer, though it most definately is.

At the end of the day I suspect it is just a compatability thing, I don't think I have burned any thing since moving to OS X. Still it niggles at my mind, and generally bothers me.

Thanks for the help I really appreciate those with a clue helping us with out.

ERic
 
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