DVD+RW media format before first-write

[discuser]

I read up on the help information on WRITE options tick box called PREFER PROPERLY FORMATTED DISCS and understand that this option is applicable to DVD+RW and BD-RE media. While I'm familiar with the implications of this setting for BD-RE discs, I was wondering if I wanted to do a full formatting pass on a virgin DVD+RW disc, whether I would do this with this tick box enabled and perform a ERASE DISC, FULL operation?

Secondly, if I was writing an ISO image to a DVD+RW disc, would it matter whether I perform a proper format on the DVD+RW disc first, and what effect would it have if an ISO was written to a virgin DVD+RW disc without going through the formatting operation first? Would Imgburn still automatically including a pre-format step prior to actually writing the ISO image on a virgin DVD+RW disc?

Thirdly, regarding SMART ERASE function, I read in the help documentation that it says it works for CD and DVD+/-R media to write random characters to the data space and data would therefore be impossible to recover. But I thought the regular FULL ERASE (non-smart erase) would write zeros to the data space on the disc in any case. So would that not already destroy / wipe out previously written data? Is SMART ERASE useable on BD rewritable media also?

Thanks for any info / help.

[dbminter]

I'm not sure, but I think the prefer properly formatted discs option just means that a disc is properly formatted before a write is performed.  For instance, Nero used to, don't about now, not properly format discs when it wrote to them.  So, when ImgBurn went to reuse them, it had to properly format the discs even though Nero wrote contents to them that would play in a DVD player.  I know that from experience.

 

Second, ImgBurn won't write to a rewritable disc unless it has been properly formatted first.  So, if it's a virgin disc or a disc that was not fully properly formatted before, ImgBurn will do that to make sure you get a proper write.

 

Third, as far as I know, a Full Erase doesn't actually write anything to a disc.  e.g. no zeroes or ones are written to the disc writable space.  The sectors are formatted like they are when a disc is first written to.  I don't know that for sure but I can't see why a Full Erase would write ones/zeroes to each sector when a full format of each sector will erase the contents.

[discuser]

24 minutes ago, dbminter said:

Third, as far as I know, a Full Erase doesn't actually write anything to a disc.  e.g. no zeroes or ones are written to the disc writable space.  The sectors are formatted like they are when a disc is first written to.  I don't know that for sure but I can't see why a Full Erase would write ones/zeroes to each sector when a full format of each sector will erase the contents.

That would be extremely odd if regular full erase doesn't write anything to disc. I've always had the impression that this process does write to disc because the vast majority of its lengthy time consumption is spent in a process which according to the log, says Imgburn is writing zeros to the disc. So wouldn't that be overwritting the data space and whatever previous data that was on there? I can understand if SMART ERASE writes more random data but I've always had the impression that the regular FULL ERASE writes zeros to the disc and when PROPERLY FORMATTED OPTION is enabled / ticked, then the zero writes are also verified and bad sectors are mapped out and replaced with spare sectors on BD-RE media. I'll let LUK clarify this when he comes on later.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

The standard command to fully format a DVD+RW will wipe the disc clean, but it doesn't appear to on BD-RE (or certainly it didn't when I first implemented support for erasing such discs). That's why the 'zeroing sectors' phase exists for that media.

The remapping of bad sectors is not something ImgBurn does itself, the drive controls all that stuff and it only happens if you've opted to format with spare areas enabled.

Can't say that I've ever tried issuing the SMART ERASE command to an optical drive, I don't recall it being covered in the MMC docs, so I've never had a reason to.

A drive will reject 'WRITE' commands if the DVD+RW / BD-RE disc hasn't been formatted first., so yeah, ImgBurn will do it if you haven't. It's up to you if it's formatted properly or not. Formatting it properly gives the drive a chance to check the entire disc - although as it's all handled by the drive and done in the background, so I don't know exactly what it's doing. All I know is that it reports something is still in progress and I wait (by default anyway) until it says it's finished

 

[discuser]

So taking everything into consideration and based on my observations on the actions of the Imgburn full erase command so far on my past experience with rewritable media on CD / DVD and BD, it seems that the so-called erase command on Imgburn is really in fact issuing a format command to the ODD, and then the drive does whatever its supposed to do internally, if I understand that correctly.

Edited January 12, 2019 by discuser

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Yes

[discuser]

On 1/12/2019 at 3:13 PM, LIGHTNING UK! said:

Can't say that I've ever tried issuing the SMART ERASE command to an optical drive, I don't recall it being covered in the MMC docs, so I've never had a reason to.

As far as BD media goes, just now I had accidentally used SMART ERASE (while actually intended to use FULL ERASE) on BD-RE media to do a full erase and Imgburn popped up a dialogue box saying that smart erase cannot be used on BD media, so that answers that question.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Ooooh, you're doing this within ImgBurn? Sorry, I thought you were messing around with something else.

*That* 'smart erase' is a LiteOn specific feature.

The first 'smart erase' that popped into my head was the one used on SSD (and HDD) drives. It's an actual command in the specifications for those types of storage devices..