[Bruck]

I am having trouble burning discs over 4.4gb. I can not approach 4.5 or 4.7gb. Is this a techology limitation? A toast limitation (toast says the disc does not have enough empty sectors. I have tried 2 brands of media so I am pretty sure its not the ridata or tdk brand discs.

Any info? Is it the superdrive? all dvd-r drives? Toast software?

[Eug Wanker]

4.37 GB is the limit. Check the link in my signature. (Scroll to the bottom.)

[vinster]

Originally posted by Bruck:
I am having trouble burning discs over 4.4gb. I can not approach 4.5 or 4.7gb. Is this a techology limitation? A toast limitation (toast says the disc does not have enough empty sectors. I have tried 2 brands of media so I am pretty sure its not the ridata or tdk brand discs.

Any info? Is it the superdrive? all dvd-r drives? Toast software?

CS degree-holders correct me if I'm wrong but...

This is simply a result of the differing measurements for data that have been around since computers were invented (i.e. 1 bit = 8 bytes and so on). Also, due to formatting overhead, sector sizes, etc. the actual capacity will be less than the total capacity listed (for example, an 80GB HD gives you 74.39 GB of storage once it's formatted).

Like hard drive manufacturers, DVD-R marketers like to give absolute measurements (i.e. 4.7 GB is equal to 4,700,000,000 bytes). Now looking at things in terms of 1,024,000 bytes is equal to 1MB), 4,700,000,000 ÷ 1,024,000,000 (or 1GB) = 4.58984375GB. Looking at it this way, you can actually reverse things and write exactly 4,700,000,000 bytes of data to a single-layer DVD-R. Do a get info on a folder that's exactly 4.58984375GB and you'll see it says (4,700,000,000 bytes).

Hope that makes sense.

EDIT: Just doing some calculations with a full DVD-R and it looks like 4.34GB (or 4,666,470,000 bytes) is the max. So it looks like you lose a couple hundred MB for formatting/overhead

[diskgolfking]

Originally posted by vinster:
CS degree-holders correct me if I'm wrong but...

This is simply a result of the differing measurements for data that have been around since computers were invented (i.e. 1 bit = 8 bytes and so on). Also, due to formatting overhead, sector sizes, etc. the actual capacity will be less than the total capacity listed (for example, an 80GB HD gives you 74.39 GB of storage once it's formatted).

Like hard drive manufacturers, DVD-R marketers like to give absolute measurements (i.e. 4.7 GB is equal to 4,700,000,000 bytes). Now looking at things in terms of 1,024,000 bytes is equal to 1MB), 4,700,000,000 ÷ 1,024,000,000 (or 1GB) = 4.58984375GB. Looking at it this way, you can actually reverse things and write exactly 4,700,000,000 bytes of data to a single-layer DVD-R. Do a get info on a folder that's exactly 4.58984375GB and you'll see it says (4,700,000,000 bytes).

Hope that makes sense.

EDIT: Just doing some calculations with a full DVD-R and it looks like 4.34GB (or 4,666,470,000 bytes) is the max. So it looks like you lose a couple hundred MB for formatting/overhead

It's worse than that isn't it? 1GB (as measured by the computer) isn't 1,024,000,000 it's 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1,073,741,824

[vinster]

Originally posted by diskgolfking:
It's worse than that isn't it? 1GB (as measured by the computer) isn't 1,024,000,000 it's 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1,073,741,824

Aha, that's where I was gaining bytes. Thanks for the clarification.

[madmacgames]

and if you use finder to burn a disc, it gets even worse. Apple limits a DVD to 4.28 GB I believe. Using a 3rd party program like Toast you should be able to get close to the actual 4.38 limit though.