Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Chapter 10. CDs, DVDs, and iTunes

How the Mac Does Disks

Apple shocked the world when, in 1997, it introduced the iMac without a floppy disk drive—and proceeded to eliminate the floppy drive from all subsequent Mac models in the following years. Apple argues that the floppy disk is dead—it’s too small to serve as a backup disk, and, in this day of the Internet, it’s a redundant method of exchanging files with other computers.

Disks Today

But the floppy disk didn’t disappear entirely. Millions of older Macs still have floppy drives, and many owners of modern Macs buy add-on floppy drives. In fact, you can introduce all kinds of disks to a Mac these days (see Figure 10-1). Here are the most popular examples:

Hard drives and the iPod

Thanks to the Mac’s FireWire jack, it’s easier than ever to attach an external hard drive for extra storage. In Mac OS X, having such a spare disk around is especially useful for dual-booting purposes: you can keep Mac OS X on one hard drive, and Mac OS 9 on another (Section 5.4).

It would be hard to imagine a more convenient second hard drive than, for example, Apple’s iPod, which is not only an outstanding MP3 music player but also doubles as a self-powered, extremely compact, bootable hard drive.

Zip disks, Peerless drives

Whether your Zip drive is built into the front panel of your Power Mac or attached via the USB or FireWire port, you wind up with an inexpensive system for backing up and transferring files. (Each $10 Zip disk holds 100, 250, or 750 megabytes, ...