I have burned a set of about 50 CDs containing about 20 GB of data.
These were written using Adaptec Toast on a Mac Powerbook G3 running
OS 8.x and a Mac Powerbook G4 running OS 9.x. I have successfully
copied these CDs to an eMac running Mac OS X (10.2.6). The CDs were
written in ISO 9660 format.

However when I try to copy these CDs to a Windows XP systems, some of
the files won't be copied. The really frustrating thing is that once
the XP system won't copy a particular file it stops the copying
process and won't copy anything else on the CD. Of course I can
manually go through the fairly complex folder structure and copy
individual files or folders but that will be a long process for 50
CDs.

I've used Adaptec Toast on the G3 to identify file names on one of the
CDs which do not meet Joliet requirements and modified them on the
eMac before burning a new CD. I still have problems, however. Some
files whose names seem OK (all letters, digits, and spaces) still
cannot be copied. One error message I receive is "Cannot find the
specified path. Make sure you specify the correct path." Another is
"Cannot read from the source file or disk." Also some files (for
example some mail files created using AOL 4 or 5) can't be opened once
they are on the Windows system. (I've tried to open them directly
from within AOL 8.0 or Word or WordPad without success.)

I've looked at the Microsoft and Apple web sites but haven't found any
solution.

Any advice?

you can try a utility called:
MacDrive - I think the current version is 5

this 'teaches' winblows to read a mac formatted cd -
this might solve the issue.

David C. wrote:

> fvanscoy[at]wvu.edu (Frances L. Van Scoy) writes:
>
>>I have burned a set of about 50 CDs containing about 20 GB of data.
>>These were written using Adaptec Toast on a Mac Powerbook G3 running
>>OS 8.x and a Mac Powerbook G4 running OS 9.x. I have successfully
>>copied these CDs to an eMac running Mac OS X (10.2.6). The CDs were
>>written in ISO 9660 format.
>
>
> Why ISO 9660 format? I always burn with "Mac OS Extended and PC
> (Hybrid) CD". This provides the Joliet extensions that Windows uses
> for long filenames and other things.
>
>
>>However when I try to copy these CDs to a Windows XP systems, some
>>of the files won't be copied. The really frustrating thing is that
>>once the XP system won't copy a particular file it stops the copying
>>process and won't copy anything else on the CD. Of course I can
>>manually go through the fairly complex folder structure and copy
>>individual files or folders but that will be a long process for 50
>>CDs.
>
>
> Windows XP is brain-dead. It's CD driver seems to choke on anything
> other than Microsoft's own proprietary format (aka Joliet).
>
>
>>I've used Adaptec Toast on the G3 to identify file names on one of
>>the CDs which do not meet Joliet requirements and modified them on
>>the eMac before burning a new CD. I still have problems, however.
>>Some files whose names seem OK (all letters, digits, and spaces)
>>still cannot be copied. One error message I receive is "Cannot find
>>the specified path. Make sure you specify the correct path."
>>Another is "Cannot read from the source file or disk." Also some
>>files (for example some mail files created using AOL 4 or 5) can't
>>be opened once they are on the Windows system. (I've tried to open
>>them directly from within AOL 8.0 or Word or WordPad without
>>success.)
>
>
> What about the total path length.
>
> I remember that back in the MS-DOS days, if the total pathname to a
> file (drive letter, path and filename) would be longer than 64
> characters, it wouldn't open. I think the limit was increased in
> later versions of the OS, but I think there is still a limit like
> this. Files that exist underneath a deep nest of directories may be
> unreadable because of this.
>
>
>>Any advice?
>
>
> Try burning with the hybrid format, if you haven't already tried.
> Otherwise, I can't think of anything. Normally, when I have to
> transfer anything from my Mac to my PC, I do it over the LAN.
>
> The CDs that I've burned (using the hybrid format from Toast) seem to
> work OK on the Windows systems I use every day (95, 98, NT4 and 2000).
>
> -- David