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4.7 gb DVD's Only 4.5?

S

Sgtslacker

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 3, 2002
Messages
80
Okay,
So I'm trying to back up stuff on my HD with my Sony DVD RW DRU-510A with Memorex 4.7 gig DVD+R's. When I throw them into Nero and I try to make a data CD it only let's me put information up to 4.5 gigs. This is also the same with Recordnow Max.... it's somewhat frustrating. I was just wondering if there's a reason for this or if there's actually a way to burn the complete 4.7 gigs.
 
Actually, you've run into the problem of media manufacturers using different methods of rating capacities than Microsoft does. Your "4.7GB" DVD disk actually holds 4.5GB after formatting.
 
The problem here is that the maximum capacity of your single layer DVD-/+R is really 4482MB. If you look closer at the limiter that Nero sets, it’s not aligned exactly at 4500MB.

Need an explanation? Well, you see the 4.7Giga byte labeled on the case of your DVD-/+R is a metric measure, in terms of computer data storage, metric doesn’t work because the system is base 2 not base 10. So taking that into account you have:

4.7Giga * 10^9 / 2^20 = ~4482MB
Click to expand...
ripped off dslreports
 
Sgtslacker said:
Ah hah I see... thank you very much that clears up a lot.
Click to expand...
Yep. When the DVD makers claim "4.7GB", they mean 4,700,000,000 bytes (or 4.7 billion bytes). But Windows (and most DVD burning proggies) use the formula 2**20 bytes = 1MB, not the 10**6 bytes = 1MB method. As a result, the 4482MB capacity is correct (or in absolute base-2 gigabytes, 4.377GB).

Though CD-R/RW makers do report the correct capacity, in binary megabytes. (That is, a 700MB CD-R does hold 700MB, which is about 734 million bytes, as reported by Windows and CD-burning proggies).
 
I have noticed this too. Nero shows the overflow marker at 4.5GBs. So 4.7b is really 4.45b bytes but are all DVDs this way or are some 4.7GBs which is really like 5 billion bytes?
 
Actually, all single-layer DVDs are like that - 4.7GB as 4.7 billion bytes, which comes out to about 4480MB.
 
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