CD-R Capacity

A 120mm sized CD disc can store up to 74 minutes of audio (650MB). Generally, you can find CD-R with 93-minute capacity for audio but there are 97 (860MiB) and 99 (870MiB) minute discs available. However, they are less common and do not follow Orange Book standards. Discs that can hold more than the standard 74 minutes utilize special techniques in manufacturing to write more data onto the disc such as Sanyo’s HD-BURN or Plextor’s GigaRec.

Discs actually can hold more than is slated in their standards but there is no guarantee it will be playable in a disc reader or player. In fact, larger capacity CDs have the highest frequency of playback failure and therefore are not suitable for archival use.