How to overburn a CD/DVD in Mac OS X
The Mac OS X Finder does not allow overburning of optical discs, nor does the Disk Utility application.
Overburning is the process of recording data past the normal size limit. Generally, an optical disc has a lead-out of approximately 10% of the stated disc capacity. Having recording software that supports overburning will allow a user to exploit this extra space.
Unfortunately, Finder and Disk Utility have built-in checks to ensure users don’t try to burn over the stated disc capacity. However, OS X ships with a command-line program called hdiutil that does not perform such a check and will allow users to overburn a disc.
Step #1, create an ISO image
Use hdiutil to make a temporary ISO image. The easiest way is to put all the files to burn in a directory, lets call ours overburn. Once you have done this, open the Terminal [Application/Utilities/Terminal]. Navigate to the parent directory of the temporary directory you just created (for example, if the absolute location of overburn is /Users/cduran/overburn, navigate to its parent directory by typing:
cd /Users/cduran
Then, in this directory run the hdiutil program to create the ISO image.
hdiutil makehybrid -o tempimage overburn/
This will make an ISO image called tempimage.iso in the parent directory.
Step #2, burn the ISO image to disc
This step will use hdiutil to burn the ISO image file you just created to your disc. to do this, type the following (remember to put a disc in the drive!):
hdiutil burn tempimage.iso
DONE!
That’s it, you’ve just overburnt you disc! Now that you have burnt the disc, you can get rid of the tempimage.iso file, and the contents of the overburn directory. The thing I like most about this method, is it doesn’t require the installation of any third-party software – less rubbish to bloat your harddrive with!
Chris is a shining example of how, in a world where abortion is not as easily obtained as a leg of fried chicken, an ounce of prevention can be worth more than its weight in gold. He is currently completing a PhD in Bioinformatics which he hopes may one day help him get out of a speeding ticket.
By Chris on Jan 30, 2009 | Reply
The thing I like about this method compared to others is that it doesn’t require any third-party tools.
By RudeDog on Mar 18, 2009 | Reply
I havn’t really used terminal too much and I got this to start burning my video_ts folder that was too big for disk utility to burn within a few minutes. I did run hdiutil imageinfo -format tempimage to see if my image was a cd/dvd master format (apparently that would be reported as UDTO) and it was.
I got some more info from apples website about hdiutil if any else wants to read up on some more commands:
http://developer.apple.com/DOCUMENTATION/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/hdiutil.1.html
Thanks for the tip, now I’m crossing my fingers, hoping it will play in my dvd player!
=)
By Chris on Mar 29, 2009 | Reply
@RudeDog: Thanks for putting the link to the hdiutil command – it seems a pretty powerful tool! How did the DVD burn go in the end?
By rla on Nov 9, 2009 | Reply
Does not work on my system. Unibody 17″ Macbook Pro 10.5.8 upgraded to 10.6.1 and still getting rejected.
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-868:
Firmware Revision: KA19
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media: Insert media and refresh to show available burn speeds
“Burn failed
The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry.
The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry.
hdiutil: burn failed – The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry.”
or
“hdiutil burn tempimage.iso
Please insert a disc:
Media does not have enough free space”
By Thibaut on Dec 30, 2009 | Reply
Yep, same here, “The device failed to respond properly, unable to recover or retry.” Tried on my hackintosh and macbook pro 15″ (both running Leopard)
By Chris on Dec 30, 2009 | Reply
I guess what I should have mentioned was that this worked for a 13″ macbook running Leopard (10.5.x).
I’ll have to have another go on this machine here (13″ macbook) now that I have Snow Leopard and see if it still works, as well as playing with a Macbook Pro. I guess it is possible that either Apple have disabled this ability with the software, or some Superdrive models may have some sort of firmware block on this ability – but these are both speculation on my behalf!
By ValmirGP on Jan 11, 2010 | Reply
Worked for me, Thanks.
[Macbook 13" model MacBook4,1, Mac OS X 10.6.2 (10C540)]
I would speculate bad media too. Some media just can’t handle the overburn. In my case I used a Philips CD-R 700MB 80min CD to burn a 724MB image that Finder didn’t handle.
By Walter on Jan 17, 2010 | Reply
Worked for me, thanks!
(on brand new iMac 21,5″ – overburnt 732MB on a cheap supermarket ‘Memorex’ 700MB CD). Movie plays fine on quicktime and vlc.