Patent ID: 7126895

Claim:
A method of recording data on a recordable program area of an optical disk by irradiating thereto an optical beam having a writing power effective to write the data in the recordable program area including a non-recorded area which is blank and a recorded area which is recorded with old data, the method comprising: scanning the recordable program area of the optical disk prior to an actual recording operation of recording new data prior to the recording of data by irradiating the optical beam so as to reproduce a signal from the recordable program area, and discriminating between the non-recorded area and the recorded area according to the reproduced signal throughout the recordable program area; performing either of an initial writing operation or an overwriting operation as the actual recording operation of recording new data on the recordable program area of the optical disk, the initial writing operation irradiating the optical beam onto the non-recorded area to initially write the new data, the overwriting operation irradiating the optical beam onto the recorded area to write the new data over the old data; and controlling the writing power of the optical beam between the initial writing operation and the overwriting operation so as to secure the recording of the new data in both the initial writing operation and the overwriting operation.