Toast 8 and multi-disc recording

[dennitzio]

I am looking into using Toast to backup 48,602 JPEG files (actually frames of a movie) It's 26GB, so I figure about 8 DVDs. I'd love it if I could use the multi-span feature so all I had to do was drop in the next disc and not have to constantly track which files are burned, how many on a disc, prep each disc... I do NOT want to have the files in some proprietary format where losing one disc means losing the whole movie. If I wanted that, I'd just burn the MOV file.

 

I'm looking forward to good news! Maybe someone has a workaround for this if not... A program that automatically divides exactly 4.6GB of files into folders...

 

Thanks!

[dennitzio]

OK, I tried it out. It appears that it segments the last item on the disc whether you want to or not! Dang, that means I need to separate 40 or more folders to burn to CDs or 7 for DVDs. What a nuisance... Maybe Roxio could fix this in the next version? A "don't segment files unless they don't fit on a disc" button.

[tsantee]

OK, I tried it out. It appears that it segments the last item on the disc whether you want to or not! Dang, that means I need to separate 40 or more folders to burn to CDs or 7 for DVDs. What a nuisance... Maybe Roxio could fix this in the next version? A "don't segment files unless they don't fit on a disc" button.

I agree there should be a no-split option.

[tsantee]

What proprietary format are you concerned exists with Toast? When burning in the Data window Toast burns the actual data files unaltered except if there is a case where a file written at the end of a disc is large and Toast splits it across two discs, or if you chose to have the the contents compressed or encrypted. Toast adds a restore application to each disc for convenience (and for joining that split file if one is present), but otherwise the files are accessible via the Finder from within the folders on each disc just as with any other data disc. Just copy the folders or files inside the .spanned folder to your hard drive.

 

If your worry is you may have a file split across two discs, this still isn't a proprietary format. Anywhere you take those discs the included Restore application will take join them. But with the kind of files you are planning to burn I doubt if you'll have any split files.

[dennitzio]

Thanks! How does it determine whether to split a file? Does it wait until it's used up all the smaller files, or will it always split the last file on a disc whenever it happens to fall? Or is there a minimum size it won't split and just chunk it onto it's own disc, meaning it will never split a file period if it's smaller than the disc?