[rooter]

My OS X.4 came as a bundled DVD and the darn thing is over 5-somfin gigs. (therefore won't fit on a DVD that I buy -- I do not have a double-sided burner. Now, I am one of the biggest klutz you'll meet; and try as I might + do, I have ruined CD. after CD after DVD and so on.) Having a backup copy of my system is a must, sooo what do I do???
I've called apple several times and they didn't understand the I need a smaller DVD of X.4, or so the customer supports + tech support peoples I spoke with didn't.
The last time I called (for another reason) the apple-phone-person said; I just did this-- just download the latest combo disk image and burn it on a DVD, it will be smaller than a DVD and you can simply burn it as bootable... Does this sound right, seem doable? What the heck else do I do?! Plus, why can't I get another copy of the disk, if I bought it! (+ the computer it came on!)
Would I do that in DiskUtilities, Popcorn, Toast 5.2 (don't laugh) or _____what?
(Popcorn is essentially only for movies, right?) You can't compress it, then burn it, right? That wouldn't work would it?!?
- much obliged

[Maflynn]

umm, what exactly (in concise english please) are you looking to do?
Backup your system, use an external drive such as lacie.
Backup you install DVD, create a disk image.
not sure what the othre ramblings are about or the point your trying to make,

[Big Mac]

The combo updater isn't going to help you, rooter, because combo updaters are not full installers; they just upgrade an existing installation to the then current incremental upgrade. (10.4.4's combo updater just updates from version 10.4.2, for example.) The problem is, your bundled Tiger DVD is a dual layer disc (which is why it's larger than 4.7GBs), so a backup disc can probably only be created by a dual layer DVD burner. If, however, there are two partitions to the disc and the install partition is smaller than 4.7GBs, you could get away with burning only a copy of the install partition. It gets a bit tricky, but here are some links with more info:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archiv...p/t-39222.html
http://www.macintouch.com/readerrepo...topic3763.html