Patent ID: 7440374

Claim:
A recording medium having at least first and second recording layers each including a write-once recording area allowing data to be recorded therein only once as an area, wherein each respective layer includes: a regular recording reproduction area, which data is recorded into and reproduced from; an alternate area for recording data in an alternate-address process carried out due to a defect existing in said regular recording reproduction area or carried out to renew existing data; a first alternate-address management information area including a plurality of sectors for recording alternate-address management information for managing alternate-address processes each using said alternate area; and a second alternate-address management information area for recording said alternate-address management information when the recording medium is finalized; and wherein written unwritten state indication information of both the first layer and the second layer, which is information indicating whether or not data has been written into said data unit, is recorded successively into the plurality of sectors one after the other and the written unwritten state indication information is written into sectors of the alternate area of the second layer when the sectors of the first layer are full.