[techguru]

Greetings people that I don't know but would like some help on a troubling question.

I would like to know the process to make a backup copy of my mac os cd. Like most computer games, companies put copy protection on the cd to prevent illegal copying from happening. Are the Mac installation disks copy protected or can they be burned right off your Mac's CD burner?

[analogika]

They can be copied.

Use Disk Utility to first create an image file of the disk, and then burn that.

[jmiddel]

Analogika, why is better to burn a disk image rather than just copying the DVD as data?

[Art Vandelay]

Because you don't get everything if you just copy the contents off the CD/DVD. There are many invisible files, permissions, etc that you don't get if you manually copy the disc.

[msuper69]

Some Apple disks are now dual-layer so if you've got an older single-layer SuperDrive like on the first gen MacBooks, you can't copy them (w/o additional hardware).