When you store a project on to the hard drive (HDD), they are placed into a partition so that it can easily be recalled at a later date. A partition is similar to a room in which the project stays until it’s deleted or overwritten. Typically on most systems, the partitions are set sizes and cannot be altered to accommodate the data stored inside. For instance, the partitions could be set at 9GB to hold DVD9 (8.5GB), DVD5 (4.7GB), and CD (700MB) discs. So even if you stored a 700MB CD, it’s taking up 9GB of space on the HDD. The HDD could be set for smaller partitions, say 5GB each, but then you couldn’t store any DVD9 discs onto the HDD because there wouldn’t be enough room to fit them.

In the new SharkCopier duplicators, we offer Dynamic Partitions which allow the HDD to only use the amount of space needed for the data stored inside rounded up to 1GB partitions. So in this case, if you stored a 700MB CD onto the HDD, it would only take up 1GB of room as apposed to 9GB in the standard partition HDD. If you stored a 3.5GB DVD, it would only take up 4GB of space as apposed to 5GB or 9GB as discussed above. You can store any size data from any source onto the HDD. On a SharkCopier* with dynamic partitions, you can load CD’s, DVD5, DVD9, or even Blu-ray discs onto the HDD without worrying about wasting precious storage space.

*The SharkCopier must be equipped and enabled to accept drives that can copy DVD5, DVD9 or Blu-ray discs in order to load them onto the HDD. To determine what discs your duplicator can copy, refer to your invoice, use the user manual to check the units settings or contact the seller as to the capability of your model.