Hi, I am reusing a number of DVD-RW discs and am looking for software that will allow me to recover the maximum amount of space possible. So far whenever I erase and reformat the DVD-RW using Active DVD-CD eraser, I'm getting a DVD-RW reformatted to 4.4GB instead of the original 4.7GB. Is there any way/ other software to reformat to recover more space. Also the DVD prior to reformatting would say DVD-RAM in the drive and after reformatting say DVD. If anyone can shed light on this issue, I'd be very grateful. Thanks.
4.7 gb is the maximum capacity before formatting. You will never see a formatted RW disk after formatting it. If sectors are damaged and have errors, the capacity will be even less. http://club.myce.com/f59/how-format-dvd-rw-223778/ Jeff
Jeffrey_P Thank you for the reply. Didn't know about the degradation of the media with time etc. I'm looking at my DVD-RWs differently now.
what you have mentioned about not being able to burn to 4.7gb has nothing to do with bad sectors on the disc,dvd's cannot burn more than 4485 unless overburn is supported by the disc,this is normal the same goes for hard drives,the amount of data say 487mb if you right clicked properties on the folder will appear as 511mb actual size on the disc,it's just the way discs are read & you will always loose a few hundred mb in the format process depending on how large the disc was to begin with for mbr etc.your burn log will show up any bad blocks that may have been skipped with somth'n like "error burning to sector" followed by some numbers "234678",i wouldn't be concerned with using rw media just don't use them to store data you want to keep,you'll find some discs will last for ages & others won't
I did a quick erase on my DVD-RW disks using ImgBurn. They show them with 4,707,319,108 Bytes free (4.7 GB or in computer terms 4.38 GIB). Looking at the disk properties using Explorer, be sure to recycle the disk tray else the indicated free capacity may be off.
