this can't be true...

[Hectic]

hmm, nm

[Hectic]

ok, the original post was me ranting and raving about how the stupid dvd-r folks decided to take the lame path as the hard drive guys and falsly advertise the capacity of discs. i had a pioneer for a couple weeks and only did some dvd5 copying so i never bumped into the fact that the actual size of a dvdr isn't 4.7 gigs as advertised. i figured since cdrs are actually 700 (real) MB (unless i've been overburning by 32 megs all these years which is impossible i believe) than the same should be true for dvd-rs. it's not a huge deal really. i have one question though...are retail single layer dvds 4,700,000,000 bytes as well or 5,046,586,573? if the latter is true, that's lame and i'm gonna be upset when i come across that 4.7 gig disc i can't copy.

[Kedirekin]

A pressed DVD5 is approximately 4,700,000,000 bytes (4.7 BB). You should be able to back up virtually any DVD5 to a DVD±R.

The capacity of various pressed DVD formats can be found in Section 3.3 of the DVD FAQ (http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.3), both in GB and BB, though not in precise bytes unfortunately.

[Kedirekin]

BTW: Section 3.3 also answers your question about CDR capacity, though for 74 minutes CDRs rather than 80 minute (which I assume is what you meant when you said 700 MB).

The capacity of an 80 minute CDR is indeed ~700 megabytes, or ~734 million bytes (unfortunately mega and million share the same first letter, so abbreviations can be confusing).

Of course, that's for a CDR written in standard data format (I can never keep all those modes and forms straight). Unlike DVDs, CDs can be written in a variety of different formats, leading to a bewildering array of differing capacities for the same media.

[alexnoe]

DVD- has about 4,707,000,000 bytes
DVD+ has about 4,700,000,000 bytes