my media is DVD -R 4.7G. i am using the Drag and drop CD/DVD software
coming with sony notebook. it always compain “can’t support this capacity”.

  what a stupid thing, what kind of DVD record software do u guys use, lease recommend me… I tried Nero , no luck neither.

If I keep the contents under 4.3GB, then the DVD always burns fine. I never had any problems with my TR2’s upgraded internal drive or the external FireWire burner using Sony’s built-in programs or Nero 6.

Recordable DVDs do not have 4.7GB capacity despite what it says on the package, just like my TR’s 40GB hard drive formatted out to 37.2GB. If you’re experiencing burning problems with the contents of your disc under 4.3GB, then that’s another issue entirely.

That’s right. DVD has exactly 4700000000 bytes.

However, 4.7GB would be 4.7*1024*1024*1024 = 5046586572 bytes, a lot more.

DVD just has 4700000000/1024/1024/1024 = 4.3GB

Yeph !!!! The other day i was trying to write DVDs with all southpark seasons in them, but it didnt allow me. So i wondered what the hell it was on about since the pack said 4.7 GB and the .rar was only about 4.62. But then i realized after reading on another website how its about 4.3 GBs instead of 4.7.

Never liked maths too much !

now it works.  if so, why all those media say “4.7G”?  little bit confusing..

i use nero 6 as well..never had a problem.. (under 4.3GB):roll:

Of course it is. It’s just marketing.

HD manufacturers have been doing this for a really long time now. If you have a 40GB HD, it might very well be that it either really has 40*1000*1000*1000 bytes instead of 40*1024*1024*1024 bytes (which makes a great difference at that size!) or that it has something near 40GB which has been rounded to it.

I don’t own my TR5MP yet… but apparently its harddrive suffers from this marketing issue as well.

Every human activity generates its own jargon and it’s much easier and faster to say or write four kilobytes as 4KB than 4096 bytes or, God forbid, 4.096K bytes. When you get to the millions and billions those extra few bytes really add up. One GB is actually 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Throw in some marketing types as confused as you and they’d rather tell you the disc has 4.7 gigabytes (which it does). Your eight bit based machine and the folks who write the software see those bytes as 4.3GB

If you’re interested:

It just kinda worked out that way since we’re still tied to our roots. Under the binary system one bit can represent two states, 0 or 1. Two bits allow us to count (in decimal) up to four. Seven bits provides 128 possible combinations and eight bits gives us 256.

Originally ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) was seven bits. Enough for the alphabet, numbers, a few special characters and some control codes like enter, delete, backspace etc. Bit number eight was used as a simple form of error checking. Western Union was king of the data hill and sophisticated ebusiness was by telegram.

With the need for more special or non-English characters and control codes, the eighth bit was stolen to allow 256 possibilities. Thus eight became the magic number for storage, processing and data transfer.