The Capacity of a blank DVD

P

Pongydog

New Member
The capacity of a dvd is supposed to be 4.7GB but my Sony DVD burner will not write that amount of data on a disc.

I've just tried to burn 4.62 GB on a disc and come up with an error message.


If i do a right-click on my dvd burner in my computer and look in the window it reads:

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Used Space: 4.31Gb
Free Space: 393Mb
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The usual capacity available is seen in the burning software you are using. If you are editing video the total of hours and minutes that can be burned to disk are usually indicated. On many softwares you can find a circle that will flash once the total amount that can be written is seen with a slight slice taken out of the circumference. Liken that to a piece of cake or pie. The usual max seen on single layer dvd-r media is 4.2gb.
 
Yea, the DVDs will say 4.7gb on them, but in reality they are a few hundred mb off. No storage device of any kind is labeled to its exact capacity. So in theory, it would really differ from each individual dvd. And why do i sound like a collage student?

Anyway, the reason that it isnt measured to its exact is for one, its easier to label it as 1gb then 968mb or whatever, and it also sounds better. That and maybe originally it was 1gb, but it may have installed boot programs/minor files/filing system that takes up a few mb.
 
elmarcorulz said:
Same reason when you buy a 250GB hdd you can actually only use about 238GB of it.
Click to expand...

I usually see 238.434gb for a close figure. But when you boot up with a startup floppy and change to the root of C enter the "DIR" command and press the enter key. 250,000,000,075,700,220 or some odd figure in bytes is then seen. But that is with dos only.

{LSK} Otacon said:
Yea, the DVDs will say 4.7gb on them, but in reality they are a few hundred mb off. No storage device of any kind is labeled to its exact capacity. So in theory, it would really differ from each individual dvd. And why do i sound like a collage student?

Anyway, the reason that it isnt measured to its exact is for one, its easier to label it as 1gb then 968mb or whatever, and it also sounds better. That and maybe originally it was 1gb, but it may have installed boot programs/minor files/filing system that takes up a few mb.
Click to expand...

It's actually the closest "rounded" figure between the byte to gigabyte conversion along iwth the master boot record(smallest), the partition info, any recovery partition for system restore, and the basic space that is taken up by the operating system itself. That's in reference to a hard drive only. On removable the software writes track data and file information as well.
 
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