Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

mjames · Feb 28, 2004, 05:22 PM

Been a Mac and OS X user for about a month and it makes me totally forget about Windows. Anyway, I burned a CD-RW with items in my weekly backup and now I can't burn to it or modify it again. Is there anyway I can erase it and burn to it over and over, each week? Or perhaps there is good backup software? Thanks in advance.

malvolio · Feb 28, 2004, 05:33 PM

You can erase it by using Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities).
There are several options for doing back-ups. I use one called Deja Vu.
Go to either versiontracker.com or macupdate.com (or both) and do searches to find more back-up options.

mjames · Feb 28, 2004, 06:40 PM

Hmm, the erase button is grayed out when I try to erase the inserted CD-RW in the Disk Utility. Why is this? Also, will I be able to write to it by dragging and dropping, after it's erased, like a blank disc when I opened it?

mitchell_pgh · Feb 28, 2004, 10:03 PM

Welcome mjames,

You will find that you will want to buy CD-R disks and simply throw them away after you are done. It sounds like a waste, but CR-RW disks on the Mac aren't all they are cracked up to be.

It should be simple, but it's not.

mjames · Feb 28, 2004, 10:35 PM

I'm confused now. So I can't burn multiple times onto CD-RWs? Not only is it costly, but wasteful to the environment to keep throwing them away, especially if I make weekly backups. Having just had a PC die on me, I can tell you first hand that backups are a must!

malvolio · Feb 29, 2004, 01:11 AM

Odd. The Erase button is not grayed out for a CD-RW on my machine. And I have successfully done multiple burns. In fact, the CD-RW I just tried lists its contents as "Session 1."
A further note: You need to select the entire CD-RW disk, not just its contents, in order to have access to the Erase button. If I highlight the contents instead of the disk itself, the Erase button is in fact grayed out.

mitchell_pgh · Feb 29, 2004, 09:45 AM

Originally posted by mjames:
I'm confused now. So I can't burn multiple times onto CD-RWs? Not only is it costly, but wasteful to the environment to keep throwing them away, especially if I make weekly backups. Having just had a PC die on me, I can tell you first hand that backups are a must!

Costly?
Well, if you consider $20 for 50 disks expensive...

Environment?
They are plastic, recycle them.

But seriously, if you want to make backups, get a 2nd hard drive. It's the best way.

mjames · Feb 29, 2004, 10:13 AM

Ah, I was trying to erase it while highlighting its contents rather than the drive. I got it erased and burned again, but it tells me an error occurred when it was verifying the disc and it may not work. But it seems to work since it shows all the files I burned when I access it. Why am I getting this error?

bergy · Feb 29, 2004, 01:59 PM

You might be interested in this ... does incremental backups ..

iMsafe
http://homepage.mac.com/sweetcocoa/imsafe/

iMsafe backs up data stored on any mounted OS X volume (such as your HD) to any mounted OS X volume. You can run backups from within iMsafe or schedule your backup to occur every day, on weekdays or on a specific day of the week. And you can create as many backup tasks as you like, so the possibilities are unlimited. The coolest feature in iMsafe is its incremental backup option: you can choose to only backup files that have changed since the last backup, dramatically reducing backup time. iMsafe will compare both versions and will transfer only the updated part.

As far as burning programs .. I recommend learning all the capabilities of Disk Utility .. being an Apple product .. it will be the most bug free.