Patent ID: 6891786

Claim:
An optical disk drive comprising: a light source emitting a light beam to a recordable optical disk by a controlled recording power; a disk rotation device rotating the disk at a controlled velocity; an OPC unit performing an optical power calibration OPC prior to a start of recording of the disk by accessing a power calibration area at a predetermined track of the disk with the light beam emitted by the light source while the disk is rotated at a constant linear velocity, the OPC being repeated with one of different recording powers being shifted to another and applied to the light source; an optimum recording power determining unit determining an optimum recording power for the light source during the recording of the disk based on results of the OPC performed by the OPC unit; an OPC velocity changing unit changing a highest linear velocity of a number of linear velocities, provided for the disk rotation device, to a next highest linear velocity for the controlled velocity of the disk rotation device during a subsequent OPC; a detecting unit detecting whether the OPC and the optimum recording power determination are normally performed after one of the linear velocities is set by the OPC velocity changing unit; and a rotation speed setting unit setting the controlled velocity of the disk rotation device during the recording to an angular velocity corresponding to said one of the linear velocities at which the OPC and the optimum recording power determination are detected as being normally performed.