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7.96GB limit on a DVD DL??
- Thread starter iBeck
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This is completely normal. The disc is lying, because optical disc makers (along with hard drive makers) count bits differently than your computer does.
According to the manufacturers, 1 kilobyte is 1000 bytes. According to your computer, 1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes. The same applies to all the other units - megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, etc.
To account for this discrepancy, simply take the advertised size (8.5 GB, in this case) and convert it to bytes by multiplying by the manufacturer's conversion factor (1,000,000,000 or 1 billion) then divide by 1,073,741,824 (your computer's bytes to gigabytes conversion factor). This yields about 7.92 GB usable (the real number is a little less than 7.92 but I've rounded it for convenience).
According to the manufacturers, 1 kilobyte is 1000 bytes. According to your computer, 1 kilobyte is 1024 bytes. The same applies to all the other units - megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes, etc.
To account for this discrepancy, simply take the advertised size (8.5 GB, in this case) and convert it to bytes by multiplying by the manufacturer's conversion factor (1,000,000,000 or 1 billion) then divide by 1,073,741,824 (your computer's bytes to gigabytes conversion factor). This yields about 7.92 GB usable (the real number is a little less than 7.92 but I've rounded it for convenience).
I don't know for sure, but I believe it might depend on the type of data you are storing. I.e. if you are just storing files you can get 8.5 GB but if you are creating a DVD (movie-type project) the header data and such may require more room and limit the amount of space available.