When you buy a DVD disk to use it as a data storage medium, you expect to be able to store 4.7GB of data on it. But when you read the available capacity, you see that the computer reads less than that. There is nothing wrong with your computer, let us explain.
On the face of the single layer DVD media, it says it has a storage capacity of 4.7 GB capacity. But it looks like less than 4.7 GB on a PC?
The way the blank DVD manufacturers label the DVD storage capacity is different from the way our computer reads it.
Generally blank DVD manufacturers label the disc in the following manner
- 1 Kilobyte = 1000 Bytes
- 1 Megabyte = 1000 Kilobytes
- 1 Gigabyte = 1000 Megabytes
However, the Computer reads the storage in the following manner:
- 1 Kilobytes= 1024 Bytes
- 1 Megabytes= 1024 Kilobytes
- 1 Gigabyte = 1024 Megabytes
The universally correct way to read computer storage units is the latter, Therefore, with a computer reading the DVD Storage it reads the 4.7 GB = 4,7000,000,000 Bytes (As intended by the blank DVD Manufacturer) in the following manner:
- 4,7000,000,000 Bytes divided by 1,024 = 4,589,843 Kilobytes
- 4,589,843 Kilobytes divided by 1,024 = 4,482 Megabytes
- 4,482 Megabytes divided by 1,024 = 4,376 Gigabytes
Which is nearly equal the 4.38 Gigabytes which is the real computer capacity shown by you computer.
In conclusion, if blank DVD manufacturers what to write the correct computer capacity using the 1=1024 translation model, they should write 4.38Gigabytes not 4.7Gigabytes