Re: Media migration - archiving old computer floppies onto CDR

[Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net>]

Mike Ford <mikeford@netwiz.net> wrote:

: All the CDR I have used so far have been nearly free after rebate, and I
: have about 3 boxes of ten sitting by my desk waiting to use. I find I am
: spending more on stuff to put CDRs in, than the CDRs (using CaseLogic
: pocketed notebook sleeves). Once you have a few hundred CDs, the job
: becomes keeping them sorted enough to be usefull. This is all personal
: preference of course.

Blank CDs are $15/ten pack at Sam's, no rebate, no fuss. That's easier, not
to mention how rebates are usually limited to one per household.

: What I have questions on is the partition size of 650 MB. CDR will hold a
: total of 640 MB, and have a file sector allocation that is different from
: most hard drives (smaller files will have less wasted space on CDR). I
: happen to use 850 MB, mostly so I can move files around, and that I still
: don't have everything wired on burning CDs. With the larger partition I
: can put on a bunch of stuff, then trim it down to fit on a CD (which isn't
: always clear until a test burn is done).

CDs hold 650 mb, and say so on the labels. When I have a 650 mb scratch volume
full, I can burn discs which are completely full. All of my homemade quicktime
discs say 647 or 648 mb are in use.

With HFS, block sizes are tied to the size of the volume. That means that
small volumes are more efficient in utilizing space. That means that a given
amount of data takes up more space on a large volume than the same amount
takes up on a smaller volume.

A friend of mine brings his Jaz drive over sometimes to burn discs. He has
650 mb of files on the disks, and most of the time the 650 on the Jaz disks
made full CDs. That's when he only had a few dozen files on there, such as
homemade QTs. Last time he had 19000+ files, and even though they were 650
mb on his Jaz disk, the CD came out only to 550 or so mb. I told him that's
why I use 650 mb scratch volumes, so that when you get them full, they will
fill a CD. Otherwise the differing block sizes on HFS volumes come into play.
If you don't partition your disk space like that, Toast (the Mac CD writing
software most people use) lets you create 650 mb temporary partitions. The 
same idea applies, to get the CD as full as possible.
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