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A standard 120 mm CD-ROM holds up to 747 MiB (700MB) of data. To put this storage capacity into context, the average novel contains 100,000 words. Assume that average word length is 10 letters and that each letter occupies one byte. A novel therefore might occupy 1,000,000 bytes (1000 kB, without layout information). One CD can therefore contain around 700 novels. If each novel occupies at least one centimetre of bookshelf space, then one CD can contain the equivalent of seven metres of bookshelf. However, textual data can be compressed by more than a factor of ten, using compression algorithms, so a CD-ROM can accommodate close to 100 metres of bookshelf space.

Capacities of Compact Disc types
Type
Sectors
Data max size
Audio max size
Time
(MB)
(MiB)
(MB)
(MiB)
(min)
8 cm
94,500
193.536
≈ 184.6
222.264
≈ 212.0
21
550 MB
283,500
580.608
≈ 553.7
666.792
≈ 635.9
63
650 MB
333,000
681.984
≈ 650.3
783.216
≈ 746.9
74
700 MB
360,000
737.280
≈ 703.1
846.720
≈ 807.4
80
800 MB
405,000
829.440
≈ 791.0
952.560
≈ 908.4
90
900 MB
445,500
912.384
≈ 870.1
1,047.816
≈ 999.3
99

 


Note: Megabyte (MB) and minute (min) values are exact.