Patent ID: 7940613
Filing Date: 2011-05-10
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
1. A drive apparatus for performing a sequential recording for a write-once recording medium, wherein the write-once recording medium includes a spare area, a user data area, replacement management information, and a plurality of error correction code (ECC) clusters, each of the plurality of ECC clusters includes a plurality of physical sectors, the replacement management information includes replacement location information for indicating the location of replacement ECC clusters on which data recorded in original ECC clusters has been reproduced in a read-modify-write (RMW) process, and status information, the status information including status information values of each replacement ECC cluster for indicating whether there is any physical sector in which the reproduction of data has failed in the original ECC cluster, whether the original ECC cluster is replaced with the replacement ECC cluster, and whether the replacement location information of each replacement location is a location in the user data area or in the spare area, the drive apparatus comprising: a recording/reproduction section for performing a recording operation or a reproduction operation for the write-once recording medium; and a drive control section for controlling the recording/reproduction section, wherein the drive control section at least performs a process including: receiving a recording instruction at least specifying data to be recorded and a location at which the data is to be recorded; performing the RMW process of reproducing data recorded in the original ECC cluster including the location specified by the recording instruction, modifying at least a portion of the reproduced data, and recording the modified data in the replacement ECC cluster; recording attribute information in each of the plurality of ECC sectors, wherein determining whether or not there is any physical sector, in which the reproduction of data has failed, in the original ECC cluster in the RMW process; and setting the status information values to indicate whether there is any physical sector, in which the reproduction of data has failed in the original ECC cluster, whether the original ECC cluster is replaced with the replacement ECC cluster, and whether the replacement location information indicates a replacement ECC cluster location in the user data area or the spare area.