copying off an CD burned on a mac long ago...

2026-03-02 16:38 UTC

I have some old HFS formatted burned CDs burning in toast on a classic mac. A friend needs his stuff moved off these backups onto his NAS but his modern mac cannot read these CDs. I can mount them in linux manually but the filenames have illegal characters so I cannot copy them over to anything without losing like half of them.

Replies (7)

@just_another_person@lemmy.world 2026-03-02 16:42

Not sure what the actual question is here, but if the files are there, the filesystem is mounted properly using hfsplus, and you can read the files, then any incompatible characters will be properly substituted, and the files can be copied. Your friend will just have to put some work into properly renaming then afterward.

Open ##493989
@Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-03-02 17:04

Have you tried creating a period-accurate Mac VM, allowing passthrough of the drive peripheral to the VM, then copying the data from the VM to something like a Mac format flashdrive?

Open ##494109
@elmicha@feddit.org 2026-03-02 17:52

If nobody has a better idea, you could create a loop device with a HFS filesystem, copy the CD to that filesystem, replace all bad filenames, then copy everything to a normal filesystem.

Open ##494467
@bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 2026-03-02 17:54

You probably need to pass the iocharset mount option.

Open ##494495
@tla@lemmy.world 2026-03-02 22:33

#!/bin/bash — Configuration — SOURCE_DEV=“/dev/sr0” MOUNT_POINT=“/mnt/mac_legacy_cd” DEST_DIR="$HOME/Desktop/mac_recovered_files" 1. Ensure the system is ready echo “Checking for HFS support…” sudo modprobe hfs 2>/dev/null sudo modprobe hfsplus 2>/dev/null Create directories sudo mkdir -p “$MOUNT_POINT” mkdir -p "$DEST_DIR" 2. Attempt to mount We try HFS first with MacRoman to UTF-8 translation echo “Attempting to mount $SOURCE_DEV…” sudo mount -t hfs -o ro,iocharset=utf8 “$SOURCE_DEV” “$MOUNT_POINT” 2>/dev/null if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo “HFS mount failed, trying HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)…” sudo mount -t hfsplus -o ro “$SOURCE_DEV” “$MOUNT_POINT” fi 3. Verify mount and Copy if mountpoint -q “$MOUNT_POINT”; then echo “Mount successful. Copying files to $DEST_DIR…” # -a: archive mode (preserves symlinks, permissions, times) # -v: verbose # -z: compress (not really needed for local, but good practice) # -P: show progress rsync -avzP “$MOUNT_POINT/” “$DEST_DIR/” echo "---" echo "Copy complete. Unmounting..." sudo umount "$MOUNT_POINT" echo "Done. You can find your files in $DEST_DIR" else echo “Error: Could not mount the disc. Ensure the CD is inserted and $SOURCE_DEV is the correct path.” exit 1 fi

Open ##496830
@tla@lemmy.world 2026-03-02 22:36

#!/bin/bash # --- Configuration --- SOURCE_DEV="/dev/sr0" MOUNT_POINT="/mnt/mac_legacy_cd" DEST_DIR="$HOME/Desktop/mac_recovered_files" # 1. Ensure the system is ready echo "Checking for HFS support..." sudo modprobe hfs 2>/dev/null sudo modprobe hfsplus 2>/dev/null # Create directories sudo mkdir -p "$MOUNT_POINT" mkdir -p "$DEST_DIR" # 2. Attempt to mount # We try HFS first with MacRoman to UTF-8 translation echo "Attempting to mount $SOURCE_DEV..." sudo mount -t hfs -o ro,iocharset=utf8 "$SOURCE_DEV" "$MOUNT_POINT" 2>/dev/null if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo "HFS mount failed, trying HFS+ (Mac OS Extended)..." sudo mount -t hfsplus -o ro "$SOURCE_DEV" "$MOUNT_POINT" fi # 3. Verify mount and Copy if mountpoint -q "$MOUNT_POINT"; then echo "Mount successful. Copying files to $DEST_DIR..." # -a: archive mode (preserves symlinks, permissions, times) # -v: verbose # -z: compress (not really needed for local, but good practice) # -P: show progress rsync -avzP "$MOUNT_POINT/" "$DEST_DIR/" echo "---" echo "Copy complete. Unmounting..." sudo umount "$MOUNT_POINT" echo "Done. You can find your files in $DEST_DIR" else echo "Error: Could not mount the disc. Ensure the CD is inserted and $SOURCE_DEV is the correct path." exit 1 fi

Open ##496876
@db2__dup_9305@lemmy.world 2026-03-03 03:02

Spin up a hackintosh to read it.

Open ##498141