I'm using a Panasonic DVD Multi Recorder (SW-9581) with Windows XP and
have recently invested in some DVD-RAM discs. I've been happily
copying drive images and other backups from the network drive to
DVD-RAM discs to free up some much needed space on the network.

All has worked well until I tried to copy a 4.08Gb backup file to a
freshly formatted DVD-RAM disc, when I got the message.

'Cannot copy <filename>: There is not enough free disk space
Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again.'

Double checked the file size and the disc capacity and sure enough the
DVD-RAM disc says it has 4,578,443,264 bytes free and the file is only
4,390,022,144 bytes. Even taking into account the overheads of copying
the file from NTFS to FAT32 this couldn't possibly account for over
188Mb surely?

Any reason why I can't copy a single large file to a disc which should
have 188Mb to spare?

Regards,
Jason.

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 18:56:35 +0100, Jason Arthurs
<harvest@vitae-services.co.uk> wrote:


4.38g (available space) X 1024 X 1024 X 1024 = 4,702,989,189 or 4.7g
for marketing purposes.

http://www.fau.edu/wise/faq/byte_block.html

Conversion Table for Bytes

The following table summarizes the different measurements used for all
storage devices. This table will help to understand the conversion
from Bytes to KBytes, all the way up to TBytes. Use this table to
understand the conversion table for Bytes to Blocks (which follows
this table).

Measurement Equivalent Roughly (# of characters)
------------ ---------- -------------------------

1 Byte 1 Character


1 Kilobyte (K) 1024 Characters One Thousand Characters

1 Megabyte (M) 1024 X 1024 Char (1M) One Million Characters

1 Gigabyte (G) 1024 X 1024 X 1024 (1B) One Billion Characters

1 Terrabyte 1024 X 1024 X 1024 X 1024 (1T) One Trillion Characters

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 14:35:30 -0400, Phil Leonard <pel10@comcast.net>
wrote:

DVD-RAM discs are only 4.26Gb presumably the fact they are hard
sectored (and thus FAT32 and cannot be reformatted) reduces the
capacity a little.

I'm aware of the marketing people using millions of bytes
interchangeably with megabytes, but that unfortunately doesn't account
for the fact that I'm trying to fit a 4.08Gb file onto a media which
is telling me it is 4.26Gb and being told by Windows XP that the media
isn't big enough. :-)

Regards,
Jason.

"Jason Arthurs" <harvest@vitae-services.co.uk> wrote in message
news:qba9nv0nupsf2mh6n4sek781n8tmhtviul@4ax.com...
I believe its to do with FAT32. The largest file in FAT32 is 2^32 bytes
which is 4GB.

Paul

In article ID <qba9nv0nupsf2mh6n4sek781n8tmhtviul@4ax.com>, Jason Arthurs
<harvest@vitae-services.co.uk> writes:

Mmm, I was thinking my post might be useless after I posted it. I was
originally thinking the info might help you figure out the difference. I was
also thinking it should be the same as a DVD-R, but I thought wrong. Sorry
about that.

Looking at my empty DVD-RAM, I too have 4.26g capacity. This was formatted
using the DMR-E30 SA Recorder. There are a few different ways to format with
my SW-9571-CYY Panasonic Burner, UDF 2.0, UDF 1.5, and FAT32. But, according
to the pdf file, this tells us nothing new.:

Free Space USED SPACE

UDF1.5 4.26GB 282KB
UDF2.0 4.26GB 282KB
FAT32 4.25GB 4KB

Could this be something to consider? http://tinyurl.com/ou2t

--------------

Only UDF version 1.5 and below. Use version 2.0 in your formatting dialogue
(I suppose you have a second generation DVD-RAM with 4.7 / 9.4 gig size, not
the smaller ones with 2.3).
Maybe get the newest device driver for your drive from the internet.

With UDF 2.0 I can copy containers even larger than 4 gig., actually
4,403,200 kb, just as much as fits on the DVD-RAM. Funny, those containers
can not be createt in this size on the DVD-RAM, but created on harddisk and
then copied to the DVD-RAM. Once on DVD-RAM they can be opened and totally
filled with data being copied there, also all data can be read out. No
problems at all.

Unfortunately this does not work on DVD-R, where 2 gig remains the maximum.
So it would be nice, if DC once implemented the possibility to span over
severeal container files one real container

In article ID <3f74e0ed$0$23587$5a62ac22@freenews.iinet.net.au>, "Paul Walker"
<c_o_m_p_h_e_l_p@i-i-n-e-t.net.au> writes:

That's it. If he formats the DVD-RAM with UDF2.0 and uses XP's NTFS, it should
fly.

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003 21:53:49 -0400, Phil Leonard <pel10@comcast.net>
wrote:

The only option on the standard Windows XP formatting dialogue is for
FAT32 as far as I can see, is there a utility for formatting to UDF?
When the discs arrive the volume label is 'PANA-UDF' but XP sees them
as being full, so I've always reformatted them to FAT32 before use.

Regards,
Jason.

On Sat, 27 Sep 2003 08:56:26 +0100, Jason Arthurs
<harvest@vitae-services.co.uk> wrote:


Just Googled for an answer and finally found the XP drivers and
utilities for this drive. Having used the Panasonic DVD-RAM formatting
tool to format the drive to UDF2.0 it now accepts the 4.08Gb file
(still currently copying) without questioning the size.

It does however lose the 'summary info' data stream when copying this
way. No major problem since I rarely write anything into the summary
pages anyway. Is writing UDF slower than FAT32, despite having a x2
DVD-RAM drive it's suggesting it will take >60mins to write the data
to the disc which is slower than writing a full 4.36Gb to a 1x DVD-RW?

Many thanks to all who replied.
Regards,
Jason.

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 22:37:59 -0700, Joe Blow <joe@blow.com> wrote:

The reason for the problem, if you had read the thread, was that he
had formatted his DVD as FAT32. FAT32 has a 4g limitation. Once he
formatted as UDF2.0, the file copied properly.

Message-ID: <t6janvcu94ecehmv48ktq5pulm9jlkdpdj@4ax.com>

In article ID <rff9ov4afv7mt6fdbrnoqr9imjo3c3flg8@4ax.com>, Joe Blow
<joe@blow.com> writes:

I agree and I already acknowledged that.

No software is being used. You may not realize this, but you do not need any
software for DVD-RAM with XP. It's drag 'n drop like a hard drive. Maybe
that's where you got confused the thread?

On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 03:05:08 -0700, Joe Blow <joe@blow.com> wrote:

Wrong. Windows XP natively supports UDF 1.5, 2.0 and FAT 32 with
DVD-RAM disks.

Let me spell it out for you a little better than I did.

You know how you need drivers like Nero's INCD or EZCD Creator's
DirectCD in order to drag 'n drop to a CD-RW or a DVD-RW, like a hard
drive? Well, these types of drivers are not needed with DVD-RAM drives
in Windows XP.

I hope this is a little bit more clear. I did not mean to suggest that
"no" software was needed, just that this functionality was built in
for DVD-RAM including UDF support.

If you install a DVD-RAM drive, it will work just like an HDD when
there is a DVD-RAM disk present, no other special drivers are needed.
(You do need an additional need driver to "format UDF" since only
FAT32 formatting is supported by Windows XP.)

I use my Panasonic DMR-E30 to format the DVD-RAM as UDF. Then I insert
the formatted DVD-RAM disk into my Panasonic SW-9781-CYY burner. I
then drag my *.VOR's from the burner to the HDD.

I can also reverse the procedure by copying anything from the HDD to
the burner with out any "additional" software and it works PERFECTLY.
I've never had a problem with over 4g drives.

The OP had his DVD-RAM formatted as FAT32 instead of UDF.