Comments on: Lab Report: Unsupported OEM Dual-Layer DVD Burner on a Mac

By: Barbara

Barbara — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:19:29 +0000

I purchased the Samsung for a Mac…I can get Roxio to burn a DVD but can’t get a movie to play with DVD player. This doesn’t seem to like Mac.

By: Loren

Loren — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:00:23 +0000

I’m on a g4 iMac, but am moving my storage to SATA in anticipation of making the jump to MacPro. Do you think the Samsung SATA would would the same as the ATAPI? It will be a daisy chain drive at first, but I am really unhappy with how slow iTunes oeprates with my music (over 400gb), willing to try anything for improved speed all around.

By: rob england

rob england — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:36:57 +0000

why mac slower on external usb dvd writer. my nec 4551a works as external usb on mac mini core solo with an adapter cable ide to usb2. however, and very strangely it will burn max at 7x whereas same arrangement plugged into my pc laptop burns at full 16 x. both machines have 1gig ram. any suggestions

By: Robin Harris

Robin Harris — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:54:21 +0000

Another reader sent in a response directly to me, which I post here:

Robin,

I very much enjoy reading your site for thoughts on industry trends, and just thought to pass something along that might be valuable to you when you do more with your “Lab Report: Unsupported OEM Dual-Layer DVD Burner on a Mac” article. I tried out a dual layer external USB burner from CompUSA that was in the “so cheap it doesn’t even have a brand name” category on my Mac a while back.

It was running Panther at the time, and I had difficulty recognizing the drive initially, until I found a utility called Patchburn from this gentleman in Germany.

http://www.patchburn.de

It basically just seeds the Mac with the Vendor/Product info that is used to identify a drive, but it automates what would be a manual, text editing process. I was so happy I sent the guy some PayPal money. It sounds like the drive you are using comes with a recognizable string, but if you encounter one where the vendor info is truly masked, this can help.

I also found that for true dual layer burning, I had to resort to toast, as the native finder could not handle it. Thus, part of my curiosity relates to how this works for you on the drive you have. I will keep my eye out for the follow-up article.

By: Robin Harris

Robin Harris — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:51:28 +0000

Jack,

I’ll take a guess that you’ve got the ATI graphics emac - and the combo drive on that one doesn’t support dual-layer DVD-R at all. It will read DVDs and DVD-ROMs and that’s it.

Apple’s specs for the core duo iMac specify DVD+R dual-layer writing, with nary a word about reading DVD-R.

I’ve found the best info for specific Mac models on these details comes from the “About This Mac” item under the Apple menu. Click that, then “more info” and then “disk burning”. That lays out exactly what the specific burner in the machine is capable of. Why they can’t just publish that I don’t know, so go to a store with iMac you want and check it out.

Robin

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 06:33:30 +0000

Burning Dual Layer DVDs is one thing - but I just experienced a “perfect burn” of a Verbatim DVD-R DL disk but the Finder (eMac 1 Ghz, OS 10.3.9, combo drive) is slowww even recognizing the disk and I cannot copy any of the files from it onto the desktop.

Note: Of course I didn’t use the combo drive, I used latest LaCie burner and Toast 7.1.2.
Any comments would be helpful.
And a question: Do you know if the new Duo Core iMacs can “read” DVD-R DL disks? That model is on my “upgrade soon” list.