DVD Recordable - Capacities

Capacities

See also: DVD#Capacity

Most DVD±R/RWs are advertised as having a capacity of 4.7 GB. However these DVDs seem to hold less than the stated 4.7GB because many manufacturers quote the capacity of a DVD using decimal prefixes instead of the binary prefixes often used by software. This can be confusing for many users. While a 4.7 GB DVD can store 4.7 billion bytes: 4,700,000,000 bytes ÷ 1000 B/kB = 4,700,000 kB ÷ 1000 kB/MB = 4,700 MB ÷ 1000 MB/GB = 4.7 GB, using binary prefixes the same capacity is roughly 4.38 GiB: 4,700,000,000 bytes ÷ 1024 B/KiB = 4,589,844 KiB ÷ 1024 KiB/MiB = 4,482.27 MiB ÷ 1024 MiB/GiB = 4.38 GiB.

Format Decimal Prefix Binary Prefix
DVD±R 4.70GB 4.38GiB
DVD±RW 4.70GB 4.38GiB
DVD±R DL 8.55GB 7.96GiB
DVD-RAM 4.70GB 4.27GiB
DVD-RAM DL 9.4GB 8.75GiB
MiniDVD 1.46GB 1.36GiB
MiniDVD DL 2.66GB 2.48GiB

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Famous quotes containing the word capacities:

    The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another—another—another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another—another—another—another?
    William Gass (b. 1924)

    Mothers who have little sense of their own minds and voices are unable to imagine such capacities in their children. Not being fully aware of the power of words for communicating meaning, they expect their children to know what is on their minds without the benefit of words. These parents do not tell their children what they mean by “good” much less why. Nor do they ask the children to explain themselves.
    Mary Field Belenky (20th century)

    During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)