what is DVD Capacity?

mcbyte

i know this question had been asked millions of times

but, a 4.7 GB empty DVD±R/RW disk, how much can i take, in BYTES?
if i have a text document (.txt), saved as ascii (1 letter = 1 byte), how many letters can be saved?
4,700,000 letters?

i read that 4.7 GB is really 4.39 GB, but this is in GB conversions (1 GB = 1000 MB or 1024 MB), not that i can save only 4,390,000 letters only?

usually in CD-R 700MB, in Easy CD Creator i can burn easily up to 702 MB or 716000 KByte, it's the same?

Bear263

Maybe this can be of some service to you:

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#7.2

mcbyte

the faq says 4.7 GB = 4.7 billion byte = 4,700,000,000 byte = same byte in a txt file?

LordOberon

yeah its 4,700,000,000 bytes

which is 4.39gb (4,700,000,00 bytes / 2^30)

Unlike cd's which are 702 ACTUAL mb (for 80min) which is like 736,000,000 bytes ish (702 * 2^20) (you do loose some space for formatting though for the file system)

kinda ironic to use the proper base 2 scale for the lower capacity and on the same type of product use the base 10 version /shrug

This has always been one of my pet peeves.