Not enough space on disc

[kaindburgh]

when trying to burn file to disc my free space is over. it says my free space is 105%. the folder to burn is 4.59GB and my disc says it is 4.7GB yet when i look at my drive it says 4.37GB free of 4.37GB. Is there a setting i have wrong? why is the disc reading less than what it is supposed to have??

[Cynthia]

A 4.7 GB DVD holds ~4,700,000,000 bytes. To put it in stupid NIST termonology, DVDR capacity is 4.7 Gigabytes or 4.37 Gibibytes (a Gibibyte being 1,073,741,824 bytes). The 4.37 GB is what you see on your PC.

 

http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-70409.html

[Shamus_McFartfinger]

when trying to burn file to disc my free space is over. it says my free space is 105%. the folder to burn is 4.59GB and my disc says it is 4.7GB yet when i look at my drive it says 4.37GB free of 4.37GB. Is there a setting i have wrong? why is the disc reading less than what it is supposed to have??

 

I have a rather poor analogy for you but bear with me.

 

Think of a CD or DVD or harddrive as an empty wardrobe. Your wardrobe has no shelves and no drawers but it does have a maximum capacity. The maximum amount of stuff you can cram into it. However, with no shelves or drawers, you wardrobe is basically a box. To make this box into something you can use, you add shelves and drawers which take up space. Your CD or harddrive needs a filesystem in which to store files - which takes up space. The space your filesystem uses is subtracted from the maximum capacity of your disk - which gives you the actual *usable* space on your disk or harddrive.

 

For example, if you buy a 2 terabyte harddrive, the *actual* usable capacity is around 1.81 terabytes. 200 gigabytes is used by the operating system to create areas on the drive for files to be written.