"Overburning" CD's

50Twuncle

What is the maximum capacity (in kb) of a CDR - if "overburning" ?
I understand that - if burning music files - they can be extended from 74mins to 80mins - but is this possible for data too ?

RobTang

I hanv't heard that term for a while...

It depends on the quality of the disc you are burning to, really you are only looking at 20-60mb of data.

Totally irrelevant these days given 4.3gb dvds and large flash memory cards/sticks, online storage with boardband internet etc...

Figment

Capacity of a CD-R is either 74 mins / 650MB or 80 mins / 700 MB

IMHO you should avoid over-burning data as you increase the possibility of data loss.

poppellerant

Yes, it's possible to do it for data as well as audio. The main thing to remember is to burn at the slowest possible speed.

Although you can overburn to as far as 90 minutes with some CDs, not all CD readers can read them. I found Pioneer drives to be the fussiest drives.

50Twuncle

Thanks - so 730Mb is out of the question in any case ?

paddyrg

730MB will not fit on a 700MB disc. You could try zipping the files first, or using a zip application to span discs, or use DVD blanks (which allow upto around 4.5GB)

poppellerant

730mb might be pushing it on a normal CD.

Rather than run the risk of losing data by overburning, have you tried to compress the file with something like 7-Zip or WinRar? Surely one of these can shave a few MB of whatever you are trying to save to CD, without risking the data.

andy2004

dont forget when burning a cd the cd requires space for the lead-in and lead-out so a 700mb cdr isnt really 700mb, the lead-in /lead-out gets bigger, so loads of small files use more space than a few large files.
same thing with dvd's.
another note about cdr they use a block size of 2048bytes so 1 file using 1024 will be wasting the other 1024bytes. but i'm assuming your talking about files of 4mb so a few kb isnt going to waste.