What's the best way to split a 1.5 GB file onto 3 or 4 CDs using OS X?

March 23, 2004 5:18 PM

Let's say I have an Apple OS X computer with a gigantic, 1.5 GB file that I'd like to put onto 3 or 4 CDs, to give someone. What's the best way to spread a file across several discs? Multiple zip files? The UNIX zip command? Some backup program?
posted by inksyndicate to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I think what you're looking for is a file splitter, and there's a bunch of 'em (google search for 'file splitter'). One in particular is here. Note that in addition to the "chunks" that the file splitter generates, you'll have to give the recipient a copy of that program to put the chunks back together.

If you are looking to compress the file so that it can fit on one CD, I'm not sure you'll have any luck given that the file is 1.5 GB. If it's a log file or a text file of some kind with a lot of repetition in it, it may be possible to compress down to CD-size using winzip or the unix zip command.
posted by mfbridges at 5:48 PM on March 23, 2004

Oops...for OS X try this one (the other one is windows/linux)
posted by mfbridges at 5:51 PM on March 23, 2004

StuffIt Deluxe seems to do what you want, but it does not come free and there does not seem to be a free trial either. The standard version has a free trial, but the product info does not say whether it can do disk spanning.

Otherwise ...
posted by dg at 5:52 PM on March 23, 2004

If the other person also has OSX, another way would be:

1.Create a 1.5 gig read/write image file in Apple's Disk Utility.
2.Mount it on the desktop.
3.Copy the file to the mounted image.
4.Use Carbon Copy Cloner to re-image the mounted image into 650 mb segments.
5.Burn the segment to individual CDs.
6.Copy the segments to the other computer.
7.Double click the first segment of the image and it will mount as one image on the desktop.
posted by machaus at 6:00 PM on March 23, 2004

Or do it on the command line...
1. split -b 650m yourfile yourfile.
(this assumes your particular CDs can hold 650 MB of data... also, note the period at the end)
2. Burn yourfile.aa, yourfile.ab, etc. to CDs
3. Go to machine #2, and copy the files off of the CDs
4. cat yourfile.* > yourfile

Not too fast, not too friendly, but free.
posted by xil at 6:07 PM on March 23, 2004

Thanks. Fast, unfriendly and free sounds good.
posted by inksyndicate at 6:12 PM on March 23, 2004

Carbon Copy Cloner is free too...
posted by gen at 6:16 PM on March 23, 2004

that unfriendly way will NOT work on files with resource forks.
posted by n9 at 6:19 AM on March 24, 2004

Probably too obvious, but maybe it would be just as easy to bring one of the computers close enough to the other to connect them together and simply transfer the file? By the time you do all that downloading, installing, compress-and-spanning etc and then reverse it all at the other end, you have taken up a lot of time.
posted by dg at 2:30 PM on March 24, 2004