650MB CDRW is formatted for 700MB

I've got several 650MB/74min CDRWs which were originally used by Norton Ghost to image my hard drive. For some reason Ghost decided they could fit 700MB but the ghost image files on the CDs contain errors near the end of the discs.

Maybe a simple question ... how do I reformat the CDRWs back to 650MB? I tried the 'Erase Rewritable' function in Nero (both quick and full erase) but they remain 700MB in capacity.

Len said:

I've got several 650MB/74min CDRWs which were originally used by Norton Ghost to image my hard drive. For some reason Ghost decided they could fit 700MB but the ghost image files on the CDs contain errors near the end of the discs.

Maybe a simple question ... how do I reformat the CDRWs back to 650MB? I tried the 'Erase Rewritable' function in Nero (both quick and full erase) but they remain 700MB in capacity.

Click to expand...

That's the "overburn" feature of Nero. You can switch it off here;

Overburn was turned on so I turned it off and tried a 'quick' erase but it still is formatted for 700MB. Maybe it needs the full 20 min erase. I'll try that next.

EDIT: I tried 'FULL' erase with Nero's overburning turned OFF and the CDRW's capacity is still 700MB

I was looking around Symantec's site for info on Ghost and they state that if burning an image to CDRW it is preferred that you use blank unformatted CDRWs. To reuse previously written CDRWs they say a normal 'erase' isn't good enough and suggest doing a "deep erase" or a "physical erase" to return the CDRW to a completely unformatted state with no filesystem.

I don't think Nero has this capability.
Does anyone know of a utility that does this?

I think what happened was when it overburned the CD, it wrote on the CDFS that the CD was 700. I don't think you can correct that. Just don't burn over 650 onto the CD and you should be fine.

I just discovered something. I don't think it was Ghost's fault after all. I took a brand new never used before 650MB/74min CDRW, put it in my new TDK (aka Liteon) 24X burner and asked Nero for 'Media Info'. Nero reported 80 mins and 704MB. I repeated the test in my older Cendyne (aka Ricoh) burner with the same results. Again, the CDRW had never been formatted or used in any way.

So Nero and probably Ghost think the CDRWs are 700MB even though they are labeled as 650MB. I wouldn't mind the extra 'free' capacity but these CDRWs have proven themselves prone to errors beyond 650MB, sometimes even at only 620MB.

I guess I'm left wondering where the problem lies. Is Nero reading the disc info incorrectly? Are the CDRWs labeled incorrectly?

Bad media

I agree that some of the CDRWs may be bad (or have errors) but I still don't understand why new unused 650MB CDRWs are getting reported as having a capacity of 700+MB.

Also, I generally do a 'full' erase when I erase these CDRWs. I thought it was supposed to detect and mark bad sectors on the CD when you use the 'full' erase instead of the 'quick' erase. That doesn't seem to be happening for me since I don't find out about the errors until something has been written to the CDRW and it can't be read back.