Overburning CD-Rs: The Software Makes It Happen
Currently, blank CDs are available on the market with a capacity of up to 990 MB. Standard CDs with the CD-R 74 format have a capacity of 650 MB. On the other hand, CD-R 80 media can store a maximum of 700 MB. Both media formats can be processed by all CD burners. It is a different situation with blank CD-R 90 and CD-R 99 discs: They hold a maximum of 800 and 900 MB respectively, or 90 minutes of music and 99 minutes of audio data respectively. Whether a burner can write to CD-R 90 and CD-R 99 media depends entirely on the positioning electronics of the CD burner. The CDR Win 4.0A software that we used along with others for our tests is capable of producing 90-minute audio CDs. NERO Burning ROM 5.5 also offers this feature as an option. However, media written in this way can only be read in the same drive. As a rule, standard CD-ROM drives cannot recognise special formats.
