Patent ID: 7362665

Claim:
A seek method of an optical disk including a first area, a second area with time information undistinguishable from time information of said first area and a third area with unique time information, comprising the steps of: handling said third area as a plurality of sub-areas; managing each of said first area, said sub-areas and said second area as a zone identified by using one of different zone numbers recorded in an associative-relation table memory; storing a zone number assigned to a zone of the present position of an optical pickup or a zone number assigned to a zone of a target position serving as a seek destination of said optical pickup in a zone-number-storing memory; and changing, before a seek operation is carried out to move said optical pickup, the zone number stored in said zone-number-storing memory as a zone number assigned to a zone of the present position of said optical pickup to the zone number assigned to a zone of a target position serving as a seek destination of said optical pickup, implementing said seek operation to move said optical pickup to the zone identified by said zone number newly stored in said zone-number-storing memory, and ending said seek operation when said optical pickup arrives at said target position serving as said seek destination in the zone identified by said newly stored zone number.