MacInUse.com

The title was a question i used to ask myself and others over and over but didn’t get a straight answer from anybody. I was asking people that “If I needed to backup Leopard Disk Image dmg file  to a DVD. What software do I need to accomplish this? or What kind of blank DVD and software do i need, to be able to clone a Leopard DVD successfully into a bootable DVD including everything as the original DVD?” Well… it wasn’t difficult at all but i had to find out the hard way.

Originally, i have bought my copy of OS X Leopard DVD (10.5.0) from a local iStudio. I had the DVD for a long time. Enough to be warned out from extensive installations. Then one day, it just die on me. It won’t let any of my DVD drives read it ever again.

Luckily, i had backed up the Leopard DVD to my hard drive as a disk image dmg file using Disk Utility program and save the DVD as ‘DVD/CD Master’ (no compression) as i read about it from some mac forums. The size of the dmg file turned out to be huge, about 7 GB, not sure about the exact size. But what i was sure is that to burn an image file that big, the ordinary 4 GB DVD isn’t going make it. My DVD writers (DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) were pretty new since i bought them around December 2008 so they are fully capable of writing Double Layer DVD, no doubt about it.

Next day, i was very confident going to a computer store and asked for Double Layer DVDs which i’ve never seen any of them as blank DVD before. The seller offered me 3 brands, 3 prices from very low to very high. Of course, i went for the lowest i could get so i can buy more. The seller warned me that, to write Double Layer DVD you need hi-quality ones. My first thought was the seller tried to have me pay more than i wanted. I resisted to get the cheap ones because i didn’t believe there’s going to be any big different.

The DL DVDs i bought were so cheap, i don’t even remember what brand they were. I got home happily with something new and exciting to do. Launch the disk utility program and successfully burned the first Double Layer DVD in my life.

Then i tested it, it mounted fine on Desktop but when i tried to start up from it. It won’t work. So, i burned it again at slower speed but same result. After a while, i got so frustrated and kept doing the same thing on different machines: PC (using Clone CD never let me down before until now) on Toast 9, on Nero 9 etc. iMac, iBook Powerbook but same result. I even checked my DVD writers again and again but that’s not it. Next thing i knew, i saw a big pile of blank DVD cases on my sofa and realized that  i wasted 6 hours with more than 15 DL DVDs already. I gave up.

Three days later, i went into a different computer store (didn’t want to look like a fool), asked for the most expensive DL DVDs they have there which cost only like $2.50 each! Got home felt numb, wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Try it one last time using Disk Utility, burning the same old image file again. Inserted it in my Mac and start up with it. And there it was, installation screen i’ve been waiting for. A cloned Leopard 10.5.0 bootable at last! The DL DVD booted up nicely with boot camp and everything intact.

Double Layer DVD TDK

Finally, the Double Layer DVD chaos is a big lesson for me. I was blaming every software i tried but forgot about the crappy media DVD. I still don’t understand why they make those for, they are basically worthless trash. Basically, if i have bought the high quality DL DVD i could have burned it with any software i mentioned, even cloning it painlessly with CloneCD program on Windows PC as well as Mac. So, the Dual or Double Layer DVD brand to go for which i tried and worked every time with any software are the Verbatim and TDK. In addition, if you want to burn dmg file on a PC you might also want to try Transmac which found to be the most painless Mac file burning software on PC. Download Free Trail of TransMac Here

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