Patent ID: 7079463

Claim:
An optical disk data erasing apparatus which is an optical disk recording apparatus for writing or reading data in/from a recordable optical disk by irradiating the optical disk with a laser beam, said optical disk data erasing apparatus comprising: a first jumper switch setting means for setting a first jumper switch to ON or OFF; a setting identification means for identifying the setting of the first jumper switch; a judgement means for making a judgement as to whether or not a loaded optical disk is a write-once optical disk; an erasing means for overwriting the write-once optical disk by irradiating the write-once optical disk with a laser beam having a same recording power as that at recording, according to the setting of the first jumper switch, thereby erasing data recorded on the write-once optical disk; and an ejection means for automatically ejecting the optical disk after the data erasing process, wherein when the first jumper switch is set to ON, said erasing means starts the data erasing process, and when the first jumper switch is set to OFF or when said judgement means judges that the loaded optical disk is not a write-once optical disk, said ejection means automatically ejects the optical disk, and a display displays that the data erasing process has not been executed on the optical disk.