Patent ID: 7752509

Claim:
A defect management method for an information recording medium comprising a data area comprising a user data area and a spare area which is provided on an end of the data area, the defect management method comprising: transferring defect information from the information recording medium, the defect information comprising information on a defective area detected in the data area and information on a replacement area which corresponds to the defective area and is in the spare area; and transferring data from the spare area using the defect information, wherein: a defective area in an enlarged spare area which has already been replaced by another replacement area in an original spare area is not allowed to be used as a replacement area, the defective area included in the enlarged spare area comprising an area which originally exists in the user data area, and is later included in the spare area due to the enlarging of the original spare area, a direction of the enlarging of the original spare area is a forward direction starting from a rearmost of the data area, and the enlarging of the original spare area is performed during use of the information recording medium.