Patent ID: 7164641

Claim:
An optical disk drive device for use with a rewritable optical disk having physical tracks provided in a recording area, and each corresponding to one revolution, and sectors provided in the physical tracks and each having a header region in which an address is recorded, wherein a logical track is composed of a predetermined number of sectors; the logical track to which each sector belongs can be identified by designating the address recorded in the header region of said sector; each logical track is formed by 2 n sectors, where n is an integer, and the addresses are represented by sequentially numbered binary digits; a recording area attribute is set to indicate whether the recording area permits rewriting, or does not permit rewriting; and data representing the recording area attribute is recorded in a structure management table provided in a predetermined position on the optical disk; said optical disk drive device comprising: a unit for identifying the logical track to which the sector belongs based on the address of each sector; a unit for recording data representing the recording attribute in the structure management table; a unit for recording data in a predetermined part of the recording area; and a unit for setting the recording attribute in the structure management table to indicate that said predetermined part is non-rewritable so that said predetermined part is regarded as a ROM area which cannot be rewritten during reproduction.