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How to duplicate CD on a Mac

How to duplicate CD on a Mac

My daughter’s music CD for her skating short program got badly scratched and because it was the last-but-one copy as skater you need many copies, in case you loose/forget/scratch/misplace it,  I was confronted with the task to create a new copy. Rather than starting Nero on Win-XP notebook, I have decided to learn finally how to do it on Mac. It must be simple, intuititive and much easier than on Windows. Right ? Wrong To my big surprise, there was no easy, idiot proof, very obvious way mac-ish drag and drop way how to acomplish it. It was not exactly hard either, but it actually took consulting the omniviscent Google to find it out. To save the search for the next time, I’ll write it down. Here is what you have to do:

1 Create a disk image from source CD

Insert the source CD the one you want to copy

Open the Finder, open Applications, then Utilities, and start the Disk Utility program

In Disk Utility, select File -> New -> Disk Image from Folder

The Finder will appear – select whole CD and click on the Image button

A new dialog box will appear. In the Where box, choose Desktop. In the Image Format box, choose DVD/CD master

Click Save

Now a new file will be created on your Desktop, titled the name of your CD with a “.cdr” extension. This file is a disk image of your CD. Btw, it works even if you do not select cdr format and write disk as generic Disk Image .dmg.

Now you need to burn it on new, blank CD:

2 Create new CD from a disk image

Eject your original CD from the CD drive

Return to the Disk Utility program.

You should now see the disk image of your CD on the left hand side, typically at the bottom of the list. Select the image, and then click on the Burn button

Follow the directions and insert a black CD-R disc when prompted

You can repeat step 2 as many time you need, of course . Next time I am going to use the image, of course assumed that it will be still the same music. Thanks to Spotlight magic, I am sure I will be able to find it, because I used proper, descriptive and obvious name “track 86.cdr”. Just kidding .

What do you think – why did not Apple make this process easier – as they did for many other chores ? Has it maybe anything to do with the fact that copying CD can be and quite often is used for copyright violation activities ?

via How to duplicate CD on a Mac « Miro’s World.

7 replies on “How to duplicate CD on a Mac”

Something’s weird about this. I have done the exact same process on several CDs and the copies all play fine in the MAC, but the copies do not work in any other CD player (Car stereo, PC laptop, Xbox, etc…)

I am using standard 700MB CDR blanks and copying a music CD using the exact steps listed above by creating the CD image file, exactly as you have, every step.

It all makes sense and it seems like it should work fine, and it appears as though it does.

But put the disc in anything else than the MAC and it gives you a DISC READ ERROR.

Like the comment above, I followed these instructions exactly and it “looked” like I had a good CD. On my Mac, it has the right files copied. But my CD player isn’t playing it. It doesn’t seem to recognize it.

As above – I’ve tried it a couple of times with different new CD’s.

Any suggestions?

It doesn’t work.. Disk Utility cannot be used to duplicate audio CD’s. The computer is the only thing that you are going to be able to play those disks on..

This guy has it all wrong, trust me. You’re either going to have to use either iTunes, Toast, Burn or one of the other similar type CD replicating software.

You’re just wasting your blank CD’s doing it this way, basically..

For music CDs, first import to iTunes and then select the songs to burn as an audio CD. Works for me consistently.

How do you specify that it burns as an audio CD? It use to happen automatically but it doesn’t any more. CD’s are being copied in a format that doesn’t work on CD players. I think they’re in the format for iPads/Pods.

Assuming you have imported your audio CD into iTunes,

1. Create a playlist and put the songs you just imported in there. Move around the songs to the order you like.
2. Right-click the playlist name and select “Burn playlist to disc”
3. Put a blank CD-ROM in the CD writer.
4. A menu comes up giving you a choice to burn as audio CD

Here’s a youtube video showing you how:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drO3FMxqQG0

Good luck!