Patent ID: 7911887

Claim:
A data recording and reproducing apparatus for recording and reproducing data on and from a recording medium, the recording medium having a user-data zone in which a plurality of fragments can be reserved by recording a start address and end address of each of the plurality of fragments, and a management information zone including management information having recorded-area-indicator information and fragment information concerning each fragment reserved in the user-data zone, the recorded-area-indicator information indicating whether or not each of partial areas into which the user-data zone is divided by a fixed size is a recorded area, the data recording and reproducing apparatus comprising: management information acquiring means for acquiring recorded-area-indicator information and fragment information from the management information zone; first searching means for, using the entirety of an area in a reserved fragment as a search range, searching for a recording end position in the reserved fragment without limiting the search to a recorded area indicated by the recorded-area-indicator information; and second searching means for determining, on the basis of the recorded-area-indicator information, a search range in an unreserved fragment whose end address is not defined, and searching for a recording end position in the unreserved fragment within the determined search range.