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I have a 30 GB zip file containing an archive of digital materials available in the school library that I want to burn to DVD. Of course, 30 Gb is far too large for a single DVD and the content is already zipped. I'm open to ideas, but leaning towards suggestions that will help me automatically spread the file over multiple DVDs, including a simple program to stitch it back together again later.

Journeyman Geek
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Joel Coehoorn
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5 Answers5

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The easiest solution is probably to just split the file, then re-concatenate it before unpacking.

There are many file splitting programs available. On Linux/Unix, split -b will work fine; on Windows, see e.g. How to split large file on Windows? .

That said, this has the disadvantage that you need to get all the DVDs and re-concatenate the file on disk before you can read anything. Maybe another approach is better?

Options would be:

  • put everything on a portable harddrive
  • create a multi-volume zip archive
  • zip parts of the data individually to create multiple smaller zip files
Community
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sleske
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You want Disc Spanning, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_spanning.

I haven't used this since my 3.5" disk days but it is still valid. The wiki article has links to a freeware and an open source program that will span DVDs.

Peter Mortensen
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user32213
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7-Zip on Windows supports spanning. Simply select "4480M - DVD" from the "Split to volumes, bytes" dropdown in the "Add to Archive" window.

John Douthat
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write your dvd with the program toast titanium pro v 10 , the toast program when selecting the type of dvd in toast program , select that kind you have (for example dvd 5 4.7 GB) , the toast automaticlly split your file for some dvd , after burning you use your dvds , automatically a program run and ask you to save your file or files on hard disk , after reading first dvd ask you for others. that kind of writing works in windows and mac . it's perfect , no matter your file is zip or others files .

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Just to add to @sleske's reply, I'd copy the 30Gb file to more than one hard drive and store in different places, just in case one gets trashed.

John Warlow
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