Member Avatar for sidhis

are there any cd's that can hold large amounts of information, say 8 albums or so, so i can get stuff off my hardrive? thanks

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Following up on 's question and the helpful pointers from and , here is a short, practical workflow and a few options that fill the gaps in the thread.

First, measure exactly what needs to move. In Finder you can enable “Calculate all sizes” in View Options or select folders and press Command‑I for Get Info. From Terminal get fast totals and per-folder sizes:

du -sh ~/Music
du -sh ~/Music/* | sort -h

Those numbers drive the choice of media.

Transfer options and tradeoffs: external USB hard drives or SSDs are the easiest and cheapest per gigabyte for large libraries; large USB flash drives work for smaller collections. If both Macs support FireWire or Thunderbolt, use Target Disk Mode to mount one Mac as an external disk and copy directly (convenient for older hardware). Cloud upload is an option for offsite storage but can be slow for many gigabytes.

If you prefer physical discs, burn as a data disc so files stay intact and tags survive; avoid making audio-CDs if you want to preserve original files. For cross-platform access use an ISO/UDF-style data burn; Mac-only formats won’t be readable on Windows without extra software. Before burning or copying, export playlists and library metadata from iTunes/Music (File > Library > Export Library or export individual playlists) so you can restore organization on the destination machine.

Practical tips: if space is an issue, create smaller encoded copies only if audio quality loss is acceptable; always test a small sample first. After copying or burning, spot-check several tracks for playback and correct tags. Keep at least two copies (one offsite or cloud) for archival safety. If simplicity is the goal, an external USB drive is the least‑friction, fastest way to move many albums.

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Member Avatar for strugglebunny

are there any cd's that can hold large amounts of information, say 8 albums or so, so i can get stuff off my hardrive? thanks

You would need to know how large those files are altogether. A CD at max can only hold 700 Megabytes of data. Depending on the compression used on your music files (like if they are MP3s) that maybe more than enough. If they are large uncompressed files (such as Wav files) you might need to look into getting a DVD burner. Even then they may not fit entirly on one disc.

Member Avatar for sidhis

thanks, would you recommend any particular brand of dvd burner for mac?

Member Avatar for kc0arf

Hello,

I use a SONY DVD burner that is USB and Firewire based. Of course, the Firewire solution would be faster, but I have an older Powerbook that only has USB. I have had no problems using the Sony model with Toast.

Christian

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