Patent ID: 8228770

Claim:
A recording and/or reproducing apparatus to record or reproduce data on or from an information recording medium comprising a user data area and a spare area, the apparatus comprising: a reading and/or writing unit to read the data from the information recording medium and/or write the data on the information recording medium; and a defect managing unit to generate a second defect list entry corresponding to a data block that was originally within the user data area, and was subsequently placed within the spare area due to an enlargement of an existing spare area or an allocation of a new spare area; wherein the defect managing unit generates the second defect list entry by converting a first defect list entry corresponding to the data block to the second defect list entry; the first defect list entry comprises status information indicating whether the data block has a corresponding replacement block for replacing the data block, and location information indicating a location of the data block within the user data area as defective block information; and the second defect list entry comprises status information indicating that the data block is an unusable block for replacing a defective block, and location information indicating a location of the data block as replacement block information, wherein the defect managing unit further generates a defect list header comprising a number of unusable spare blocks, the unusable spare blocks comprising the data block.