[cold aspiration]

Hi, I have a quick question about burning...

When I insert a blank cd-r, the "ask me what to do" window pops up and I want to make a data disc so I click "open finder" and then it takes me there.

However, on the CD it says it is a 700mb disc and once in my ibook, it only says 640.7 mb. I was like wth because now I can't back up the file I wanted to. Which is 690mb. What gives? Should I just get an actual cd burning software or is the finder just as relliable.

[macintologist]

I would recommend buying Toast Titanium 6. There is also a good shareware alternative if you don't wanna pay for Toast. DiscBlaze found here

But I still highly recommend Toast. Fantastic program with tons of features and very stable IMO.

[rambo47]

The disk is 700 MB in it's unformatted state. Before your Mac can do anything with it the disk must be formatted and that eats up some storage space. If you're backing up data you could use StuffIt to compress it before dragging it onto your disk image. That should save some space and perhaps make it all fit. Versiontracker has some freeware alternatives to StuffIt. Search under "compression".

[SSharon]

I second using Toast 6. Its just crazy to burn with finder and lose so much space and have to wait much more time for it to copy the whole file and then burn it.