[Orpheus]

I've overburned hundreds of CDs with few problems (outlined below), and I've frequented forums where thousands of others routinely do the same. While there were possible risks in the early days (I started burning ca. 1997), pretty much all modern CD-burners can burn 800 MB consistently. In fact, the "official" CD standard was 650MB (from the 70min CD audio standard), so you're *already* overburning when you burn 700MB (80 min CD audio), which used to damage some burners, and wouldn't play fully on all CD players. Today, this level of overburning is expected, and any manufacturer would accept a return as "defective", if it couldn't burn 700MB, yet AFAIK the official standard hasn't changed.

Your ultimate capacity will also depend on your blank media. Cheap media may be able to reach 720MB (82 min IIRC), and "good" media, like Taiyo Yuden will easily take much more. I have a spindle of special 99-minute CDs (866 MB, available for just pennies more per disk at any media specialty site, like All Media), but they're getting harder to find, because DVDs eliminated the need, and not all CD players can read all the extra tracks) My DVD-burner can only burn almost 780 MB (a tad under 90 min), even on 90 or 99 minute media, but my CD burner can record 99 minute media all the way to the edge. Be aware, though, that it's still true that not all computer or audio players can play back the last tracks on the extreme length recordings. You should be fine if you're just archiving data, to be read by the same drive that recorded them. For any other use, you'll just have to determine the limits by burning a test disk--but hey, blanks are cheap.

The previous poster is right: you'll have to look up the procedure for *your* software. In Nero, it's under "expert settings", but it's completely different in each package I've used. And before you rely on it: test, test, test.