Simple Q: Capacity of a CD-Rom disk?

Factual Questions
1

Can someone refresh my memory…what’s the capacity of a CD-Rom disk?
Thanks!

2

Depends, but generally, 700 MB

3

it’s generally possible to “overburn” quality discs to something around 800. YMMV

4

Which is why I said “depends” and “generally.”

5

According to Wikipedia, ‘standard’ 74 min discs have a capacity of 650MB; higher capacities may be achieved by overburning (although attempting this can allegedly wreck your CD writer) or by using discs with a higher native capacity due to tighter spacing of the tracks (which places them outside of the ornage book standard - such discs may not necessarily be as reliable as the standard, or universally readable).

6

That’s not true. Depending on your drive and CD brands, you may be able to overburn a few MB. I can usually get an extra 2-4MB out of a CD. I’ve never seen an overburn that was even remotely close to an extra 100MB.

You can get 800 MB onto a standard “700MB” cd by turning off the built-in error correction for the disc. Technically, an 80 minute CD is 800MB of raw storage, but 1 in 8 bits are used by the cd formatting to control errors. Such a move is very risky (the tiniest scratch can render the whole thing worthless), and I’m not sure if you can even make normal readable discs that way. I know you can do it for Video CDs, because the video format used has its own built-in error correction.

7