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"oh, they don't like doing that for some reason"

when trying to burn something from an external HD to a DVD.

Crap, buggy lump of poop.

tried moving said item from Hd to the laptop desktop then to a dvd?

No you are.

Yes Tommy, I have, and that has worked.

But why the bloody hell should i have to do that first?

Probably because your crappy external drive doesn't like delivering data quickly enough for the DVD writer.

Crappy external drive? Western Digital on Firewire 800?

Seem to work fine on the old PC.

Try slowing the burn speed. That should tell you if it's a data transfer speed problem.

Yes, what's the actual data transfer rate though? If you open Activity Monitor (in Apps/Utilities), it will show you.

800Mbps does not mean you get a sustained data rate at anywhere near that sort of speed. It's like Broadband; it's 'up to' 800Mbps.

As mentioned; slowing the burn speed of the DVD burner may help. But transferring the file to the main HD is probably the best way.

eSATA HDs are faster, btw. 1.5Gbps. Still doesn't mean you'll get a sufficiently fast data transfer rate for the DVD burner to cope with.

Does sound like an issue; Toast Titanium 9 for example has a 'Buffer Underrun Prevention' setting, which might help with such things. I don't know, as I've not tried to do what you have. My Mac Pro has 4 internal HDs, on SATA3, so no problems there.

So, probably not the Mac that is ploppy poo, but you. Because you don't know how to drive it properly. 😉

And macs are soooooooooooo easy to use!

They are if you know what you're doing with them… 😉

Ah come on you mac fan boys. You should be able to transfer 2GB of pics from an external HD to a DVD without any issue.

And that's running at 2.4speed. Crap.

Yes, you should be. What burning software are you using? What Mac is it? What specs, etc.

Could be a whole host of things tbh.

Dual 1.8G powerPC G5
4gb DDR SDRAM
Mac HD start up

Burning through finder.

Well, you can. Because I do it fairly regularly on my Macbook Pro, from a USB 2 drive, which is pony in comparison to firewire.

Doesn't mean it won't go tits up every so often, if systems built expressly for boring reliability didn't I'd be out of a job pretty quickly.

Using decent branded CDs / DVDs ? Cheap ones have given me issues in the past.

infinity. Cheapo ones have been rubbish

Macs and the Pope. Both infallible. Must be you.

Post of the day by avdave2 🙂

I'd certainly give Toast or something similar a try. I have had it work through Finder, but I prefer not to use it.. though that's partially my PC/linux head overruling what I know OSX wants me to do. Took me bloody ages to get used to putting a cd in when asked, rather than cramming it in once I'd wrestled it out of the case.

Probably because your crappy external drive doesn't like delivering data quickly enough for the DVD write

That's what buffers are for. Shouldn't bring down the system tbh.

Burning through finder.

I've found this method to be a little flaky at times. Not tried it with an external HD though.

I know people who work with video editing, who burn to DVD all the time, from external HDs. Without any issue. Mind you, they'll use Toast to do the burning bit, or through DVD Studio Pro.

Maybe, if this is causing you problems, then just transfer the files across. Might be a fiddle, but it's not a big deal, and it will work at least.

It could be something as simple as an issue between the WD HD and the Mac. Could be all sorts of things.

Doesn't absolve you from being a ploppy poo-pants though! 😀

I always use Toast when burning data.
I usually burn 4GB of data at 4x ~ 8x speed from an external USB 2 WD drive.
And never had a problem.

I only tried using the built in Finder burn to disc once, never again……

I've found this method to be a little flaky at times

Heretic!

Well if you're going to burn me, don't use Finder, because it might not work…

Lol!

Macs, they 'just work' apparently

It could be the external. I've got a 500Gb WD that I use with my PowerBook, and I've had issues with the drive just dropping off of the desktop while using it, with some significant loss of data. Rather wish I'd never bought the bloody thing, looking at getting a 350Gb internal to replace the 80gig that it came with seven years ago…