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I have an ISO image of a DVD which is 8.5GB in size. I find this strange, because that is about 500MB more than a standard DL DVD can hold. I tried overburning with Nero, but it failed. Is it possible to somehow burn such an image? Are there some special DVD blanks that allow you to write more?

Or is this ISO simply made by some tool without any regards of whether it can be burned or not?

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    What is the ISO, if we may know? – Sasha Chedygov Jan 14 '10 at 0:57
  • @musicfreak - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iso_image – Rook Jan 14 '10 at 1:20
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    @Idigas: Sorry for the misunderstanding, I know what an ISO is. :) I was asking what the OP's specific ISO contains. – Sasha Chedygov Jan 14 '10 at 1:21
  • It contains software installation, which is already in a compressed form (lots of .cab files). – Vilx- Jan 14 '10 at 10:27
  • For files exceed maximum size you can overburn it to the disc, but not every burner software support that, and the end of the disc may sometimes not stable – phuclv Sep 27 '13 at 1:25
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The max size of a DVD+R DL is 8,547,991,552 bytes...so maybe the person creating the ISO thought this meant 8.5GB, and created one that was too big?

Or if you ripped this from a commercial DVD, real dual layer DVDs can actually hold more than DVD+R DL's can.

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  • It should be a rip, therefore my surprise. But if you say that commercial DVDs can hold more than DVD+R, than that would explain it. – Vilx- Jan 14 '10 at 10:25
  • If this is a rip, you might need to go back and re-encode the iso so that it actually goes down in size. I'm not sure of the formats, but you will loose some quality in the data, but not enough to really notice it. – Chris Jan 28 '10 at 20:17
  • Sorry, it's software installation and is already compressed (.cab). I can't compress it any more. – Vilx- Jan 31 '10 at 19:09
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    try a 7zip with ultra profile, lzma2 compress, as big as possible dict size. Maybe it'll do the job. – Apache Jun 2 '10 at 19:56
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If this is a one time use kind of thing you can use a Flash Drive instead. Since you didn't state your OS I'm not sure what method to recommend. On OSX you can use Disk Utility to copy the ISO into a partition, if it's a bootable disk make sure you set the GUID Partition Table. On Windows you can use UltraISO.

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  • Actually I wanted to burn it to a disk and get it off my drive where it is taking all that space. I do want to keep it in my archive though. – Vilx- Jan 14 '10 at 10:27
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if it's a movie, i'm using DVDFab Platinum for this, it allows to span movies over multiple (usually 2) DVDs.

load the ISO, choose Split from the DVD to DVD menu and let it work its magic. :)

of course it doesn't stop there, DVDFab can 'shrink' the entire DVD to make it fit on a normal (DVD5) or DL DVD (DVD9) using compression, or you can remove trailers, unwanted audio tracks, bonus material, etc. with a few mouse clicks to make it fit.

DVDFab Platinum is shareware, try before you buy.

Edit: so it's a software DVD image and we don't know it's origin or content. without knowing the details, i assume this is some measure of copy protection, so i suggest this:

simply mount the ISO with WinCDEmu as a 'virtual DVD drive' and quit wasting precious blank DVDs :)

for portability, copy the ISO to any external device big enough, a 16 GB SDHC card for instance is much smaller in size than a DVD. :) if you want to burn it onto DVD for storage purposes, just compress the image with 7-Zip and split the archive into DVD-sized chunks.

WinCDEmu and 7-Zip are free open source programs.

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  • Can it shrink commercial programs that need everything in the iso? – Moshe Jan 14 '10 at 2:11
  • no, DVDFab is for Movie DVDs only. – Molly7244 Jan 14 '10 at 3:08
  • DVD Fab was worth every cent I paid for it. Truely the best of the bunch. – Patriot Jan 14 '10 at 3:15
  • No, sorry, it's software, and it's already in compressed form (an installation with lots of .cab files). I can't compress it any more. – Vilx- Jan 14 '10 at 10:26
  • Just mount the ISO file or extracted it to a folder. Why should you compress it anymore? – phuclv Sep 27 '13 at 1:22
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Errrm... This might not work out for you but I had an ISO for Server 2003 R2 that was 4.9Gb but I only had a single layer DVD. I opened it in an ISO viewer (PowerISO in my case, but something like MagicISO has a free trial if you don't already have one) and simply removed everything that was to do with the R2.

This brought it down to under DVD size, and I ripped the ISO and used for an install. The R2 components went on a second disk.

Job done. Depends on what your software is and how well you know it. It was obvious that R2 could be removed from the server install package, but I wouldn't know where to start if this was say Autocad or something.

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  • Sorry, won't work in my case, or I'd have already done it. :( I have over a dozen .CAB files with the actual data, and a few small peripheral setup.exe and the like. But thanks for suggesting! – Vilx- Jan 19 '11 at 10:17
  • no worries. 16Gb flash disks are only a tenner these days :) Also - just saw the dates on this. I swear it was at the top of unanswered questions a earlier! – Patrick Jan 19 '11 at 10:40
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You can burn it onto a Blu-ray disc, which holds about 25 (decimal) gigabytes. Since it's software, it should be readable on any computer that has a blu-ray drive.

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    Well, I have neither a Blu-ray reader, nor a Blu-ray writer. The question was meant about DVDs only. But since I really did not specify, I won't downvote. :) – Vilx- Aug 18 '11 at 20:35

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