Patent ID: 7336575

Claim:
An information recording/reproducing apparatus that records information on and/or reproduces information from an optical disk recording medium allowing rewriting of information, said information recording/reproducing apparatus comprising: a use condition determination part that reproduces a program area on the recording medium and determines whether the program area includes an unused area where no information is recorded; a recording linear velocity changing part that changes a recording linear velocity in a radial direction of the recording medium; a recording clock cycle changing part that changes a recording clock cycle in accordance with a change in the recording linear velocity; a test writing part that performs test writing on the recording medium with a different recording power for each step; and an optimum recording power determination part that reproduces information that is written on the recording medium in the test writing by the test writing part and determines an optimum recording power for the recording linear velocity at the time of the test writing based on a characteristic value of a reproduction signal, wherein, when the use condition determination part determines that the program area includes the unused area, the test writing part performs the test writing on the unused area in the program area at the recording linear velocity the same as that at the time of recording information, the optimum recording power determination part determines the optimum recording power based on the test writing to the unused area in the program area, and when recording information, the information is recorded with the optimum recording power determined based on the test writing to the unused area in the program area.