Patent ID: 7990825

Claim:
A recording method for recording data in a write-once recording medium, wherein the write-once recording medium includes a spare area and a user data area, each of the spare area and the user data area includes a plurality of ECC clusters, each of the plurality of ECC clusters includes a plurality of physical sectors, location information before replacement is recorded in each of the plurality of ECC clusters, information indicating that a replacement recording is not performed is set in the location information before replacement when a data recording which is performed in accordance with a recording instruction is an appending recording, information indicating the location specified by the recording instruction is set in the location information before replacement when the data recording which is performed in accordance with the recording instruction is a first time pseudo-overwrite recording; and information indicating a replacement location for the location specified by the recording instruction is set in the location information before replacement when the data recording which is performed in accordance with the recording instruction is a second time or more pseudo-overwrite recording, the recording method comprising the steps of: receiving a reproduction instruction; determining whether or not the reproduction of a latest replacement management information list has failed in response to the reproduction instruction; reproducing location information before replacement recorded in the spare area and the user data area when the reproduction of the latest replacement management information list is determined to have failed; generating the latest replacement management information list based on the reproduced location information before replacement; recording the latest replacement management information list at a predetermined location reading already recorded replacement management information lists; selecting a reproduced most recent replacement management information list, in response to the reproduction of the latest replacement management information list being determined to have failed, wherein the location information before replacement to be reproduced from the user data area in response to the reproduction of the latest replacement management information list being determined to have failed is location information before replacement to be reproduced from an area including data, wherein the data is recorded later than recorded data registered in the reproduced most recent replacement management information list at the user data area; and generating the latest replacement information list from the location information before replacement to be reproduced and the reproduced most recent replacement management information list.