Help with Apple/Mac

[PopsPhotos]

Three of my students are running Apple computers, the rest (and I) are running M$ systems. The students get a CD during class, with instructins to put their homework on that CD and turn it in during the next class, so I can evaluate it and put comments on it. The next class, they get their second CD for that week's home work. Those two CDs then rotate throughout the semester.

The CDs from the Apple computers are comng in completely full with only 4 photographs on them, which means I have to create a new one for them. Not a big deal, jbut annoying.

Now, the question: What should I tell them to do to set up their CD writing program to let more be added to the disk?

Pops

[Wirefox]

Pops if I understand you correctly, when you burn to dusk on a Mac it closes that CD by default. If you want to burn items to a disk in more than one session until the disc is full, use Disk Utility. This is called multisession burning. For more information, open Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities), choose Help > Disk Utility Help, and search for "multisession." You get...

Normally, you can burn items to a recordable CD, such as a CD-R or CD-RW disc, only one time. However, if you use Disk Utility to burn the disc, you can burn items to a disk in more than one session as long as space is available. This is also called “multisession burning.”

To burn a disc, you need an optical drive in your computer or connected directly to your computer. You can’t burn a disc using a remote optical drive.

To burn to a recordable CD so you can burn to it again:

In Disk Utility, create a disk image that contains the files you want to burn to the disc.

The files must be from a partition with a Mac OS Extended disk format. To check a partition’s format, select the disk in Disk Utility, and look at the information at the bottom of the Disk Utility window.

Select the disk image in the list at the left, and then choose Images > Burn.

Select the “Leave disc appendable” checkbox. If you don’t see this option, click the triangle in the upper-right corner.

Insert a blank recordable CD in the optical drive and click Burn.

To add more files to the disc later, follow the steps above. You can continue this process until all available space on the disc is used.

Good luck

Steve

PS: If the students have Roxio Toast or similar app they can keep sessions open at the Toast interface....not sure how exactly since I do no have it but it comes highly recommended by other mac users

[Wirefox]

Pops, just putting the cat out and had an afterthought. If you leave a disc open on a mac it may be the case that you will not be able to read or write to it on a PC. I have never tried so it may be worth a test run. My daughter is at college and they always use USB flash drives. They are pretty cheap now and it would not be unreasonable for your students to invest in one. I would get around incompatibility issues if it proves to be an issue.

[Colin Southern]

The CDs from the Apple computers are comng in completely full with only 4 photographs on them, which means I have to create a new one for them. Not a big deal, jbut annoying.

Now, the question: What should I tell them to do to set up their CD writing program to let more be added to the disk?

I'm not an Apple Macinto$h user, but it sounds to me like they're "closing the session" so that the disk can be read in any CDROM (as opposed to just in a CD Writer).

Are we talking CD-R or CD-RW disks here?

[Colin Southern]

Plan B - is it an option to just give them a cheap memory stick?

[PopsPhotos]

The CD are R, not the re-writable ones.

Memory sticks would be an option, but ~$5.00US times 3 students times twice is out of my budget. This is a volunteer effort and there is not recompense to speak of for supplies.

In Windows, I set the "sharing" button on, so that took care of that one. I think the idea of setting "multisession" on is the equivalent.

I'm also thinking that I might write something to the new disks with the PC and see if Apple will then leave them open. Hmmmmm ...

I'll keep you posted. Thanks all. If anybody else has input, feel free to chime in.

Pops

[Colin Southern]

Memory sticks would be an option, but ~$5.00US times 3 students times twice is out of my budget.

Should it not be coming out of THEIR budget?

[PopsPhotos]

"Should" and "does" are spelled differently.

In this case, I had set the price for the class to cover my expected expenses. I anticipated 8 to 10 students in the beginner's class and 3 to 5 in the advanced class. I ended up with 15 kids and two adults in the beginner's class. We've not had a problem in the past, so I was not expecting this little glitch.

I have about 200 CDs in stock, so using 3x8 = 24 rather than 3x2 = 6 is not a large problem, just annoying. I had to set up my Win7 to keep sessions open for "sharing" and thought there might be a way to do similarly on Apple. It appears there is, so we will try it and see what comes.

Pops