Hints on burning optical media with a Mac (speeds of a LaCie d2)

Here I'll offer some of my hints about writing to optical media using a G4 or G5 Mac.

Verbatim & Taiyo Yuden media are reviewed everywhere, but the Mac user might need to know their speeds on Apple-compatible drives. Mine is a LaCie d2 super- multi-drive with LightScribe and both USB & Firewire bus sockets. Disks boot over Firewire but burn fastest over USB. Mine, inside, is a Toshiba-Samsung) TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M with LA00 firmware.

LightScribe, which I label twice for darkness:
Verbatim 16x DVD+R, MCC004, burns at 18x over USB, 16x over Firewire DAO strategy
Verbatim 4x DVD+RW, MKMA02, burns at 4x, DAO strategy (not LightScribe)
Verbatim 6x DVD+R DL, MCC001, burns at 2x, DAO Strategy (not LightScribe)
Verbatim 52x CD-R burns at 48x (the maximum), SAO Strategy

Silver Lacquer, for archiving:
Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD-R, TYG03, burns at 18x, DAO strategy
Taiyo Yuden 52x CD-R burns at 48x (the maximum), SAO strategy

Preparation

The LaCie d2 has a variety of ATA burners inside its great case, so speeds may vary. The only tools we seem to have are the freeware DVD Media Inspector and /Library/logs/DiscRecording.log, easily readable from the Console. I've never had a bad burn when run with an iced processor: I maximize resources & place an ice pack under a towel beneath my PowerBook. The desktop is mono-colored with only 'aliases', memory is free of widgets, energy saver is 'Custom' = off, & pointer in a corner disables screen saver. The only user processes are a free or freeware burning utility & freeware Temperature Monitor. When the high or low temperature changes by 5 degrees Fahrenheit, it's announced on my speakers: time a new ice pack.

No coasters on LightScribe at 18x is great is you have many relatives and own the family photos. (I also store obscure academic books in the public domain, and lectures from iTunes University.) I subscribe to a weekly newsletter from an online superstore and stock during sales: this 'guarantees' my media are genuine.

Software

Because photos & movies are standard formats, I use free Unix utilities on my Mac: Burn replaces Toast, and DVD Spanner I'm currently using to archive. There is quite a collection of Unix software with Aqua interfaces, such as ffmepgX, and even (for Unix fans) a claimed command-line 'dump' (hfspax, actually) for backing up HFS+ (to an iPod, or to DVD-RWs, for example):

HFSpax's homepage

Rewritable discs are (thermodynamically) unstable, so I use plain Taiyo Yuden for archiving. It now comes in square (plastic) boxes of 25, that rest vertically.