I am sure many of you have connected a hard-disk with 2 partitions to your Mac. What happens? Well, you get two hard-disk icons on your Desktop - one for each partition. I was suprised to find (and in hindsight it feels sensible enough) that Mixed Mode CDs behave in exactly the same way. What is a mixed mode CD you ask? It is a CD that has two different “data types” or “partitions” if you will. One part of it behaves exactly like a normal audio CD which you can play in your car’s stereo, while the other looks like a data CD.

Very few audio CDs are mastered like this. Of the 400+ audio CDs that I own, only one - Blue Man Group’s, Complex - is a Mixed Mode one. The data part of this particular CD has music videos and interviews with the people involved with the album, the audio part is well the usual (the so called ‘Redbook’) CD audio.

You can see how it can potentially confuse a new Mac user. Especially because dragging and dropping any one of the two CD icons on your desktop to trash gets you this rather elaborate message:

At least the behavior is consistent with the way a hard-disk with multiple partitions behaves.

This entry was posted Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 11:32 pm and is filed under OS, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.