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Why does vista only format cd's to 480 megs?

I have no idea what you mean? Mine doesn't - it formats them to the limits of the CD.
 
Try using free cd-burning software to format the disc.

But when formatting, you won't get the full 650/700MB. But 480 looks a little low.

What file system are you using on the formatted disc? CDFS? (Right click the drive icon and get disc properties. It should say eg, "File System: CDFS")
 
Try using free cd-burning software to format the disc.

But when formatting, you won't get the full 650/700MB. But 480 looks a little low.

What file system are you using on the formatted disc? CDFS? (Right click the drive icon and get disc properties. It should say eg, "File System: CDFS")

Just tossed a CD-RW into my drive and it shows a formated capacity of 575Mb though it's labelled as 700Mb.

Like any drive you loose some space because of the actual formating and file system plus the CD-RW also have to allow the disc to be read in machines that don't have full software installed (i.e a program like Nero's InCD).
 
I never format CDs (nor do I use CDRW). For a couple of years now I just haven't seen the general need to use formatted CDs when we have 4GB USB drives so readily at hand for mobile storage. Whenever I do use CD-R it is as a burn-at-once. More often though I'm a DVD+R girl :)

My writer does both +R and -R, but I don't understand the difference between them though. Care to explain it to me?
 
I never format CDs (nor do I use CDRW). For a couple of years now I just haven't seen the general need to use formatted CDs when we have 4GB USB drives so readily at hand for mobile storage. Whenever I do use CD-R it is as a burn-at-once. More often though I'm a DVD+R girl :)

My writer does both +R and -R, but I don't understand the difference between them though. Care to explain it to me?

+R and -R are slightly different formats. You just need to use the proper format for your drive. In your case either one works.
 
I never format CDs (nor do I use CDRW). For a couple of years now I just haven't seen the general need to use formatted CDs when we have 4GB USB drives so readily at hand for mobile storage. Whenever I do use CD-R it is as a burn-at-once. More often though I'm a DVD+R girl :)

My writer does both +R and -R, but I don't understand the difference between them though. Care to explain it to me?

+R and -R are slightly different formats. You just need to use the proper format for your drive. In your case either one works.

that was the case when they first came out but now pretty much any DVD drive will work with + or -R.

Got caught by this very early on. A client bought a DVD drive (think it was a Pioneer) and he got some discs at the same time but they were for the other type of drive and I was wondering why the hell it wouldn't work (was also the first DVD burner I'd done).

Of course the nomeclature didn't help either. For yuears had been used to the CD-R or -RW to denote either the single burn or rewritable. So upon seeing DVD-R/DVD-RW just assumed it was the same thing - not denoting a particular format.


Iirc the difference was due to the difference manufactures racing to get their format adopted as the standard with no side having any major advantage over the other. It was just the sort of cockup only the computer industry could make (at least with Blu-ray vs HD-DVD they were two very different formats).
 
If you "format" a CD, what you've done is format it with a packet-writing file system. This is utterly unnecessary if you want to burn an image to it. The only reason it's there is so you can copy things in a drag-and-drop fashion to the disc. It's better to use a standalone CD burning program where you create the disc structure all at once.
 
have you updated the drivers...

check to see if you bios is up to date
check to see if you serial ata drivers are up to date
check to see if your 4 in 1 drivers are up to date...

or better yet... just download the newest ones and update them....
 
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