Must I erase a BD-RE if I only want to write once?

[rgames]

Greetings,

 

I'm new to the world of burning to Blu-Ray here and need some basic info - I am trying to burn data to a 25 GB BD-RE. The disc is intended for archival purposes so I don't need to re-write to the disc.

 

The erasing/zeroing process takes a very long time - is it necessary if I only want to write once? I can't find any option that allows me to specify a "write-once" or "closed session" disc in ImgBurn. Can I do that? Or does ImgBurn require that I erase then zero the BD-RE discs?

 

Finally, I'm assuming that if I use a BD-R disc that neither of the erase/zero steps takes place, so I should get much faster burns using those discs, correct?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

rgames

Edited December 7, 2009 by rgames

[mmalves]

The very first time you use a BD-RE disc you must do a Full Erase on it, and even though it takes a long time, you only need to do it once: after that you can just overwrite the disc. Unfortunately you can't skip this very first formatting (it's a limitation imposed by the BD-RE standard).

 

As for BD-R discs, they can only be written once so no formatting/zeroing takes place and you should get the full write speed you've selected.