COKEDUDE Posted August 22, 2008 Posted August 22, 2008 What is the best way to erase CD-RW's? I'm having difficulty with them after I burn something else on them.
scuzzy Posted August 22, 2008 Posted August 22, 2008 What is the best way to erase CD-RW's? I'm having difficulty with them after I burn something else on them. It'd be helpful if you could explain what the trouble actually is that you get with the CD-RWs .... but to answer your question from my own experience I have a box of TDK "4x-12x High Speed" CD-RWs that I've been reusing for all kinds of purposes (audio and data) for a couple of years now, and all I ever do is let ImgBurn tell me the disc isn't empty and needs erasing before the next burn I've just asked it to do. It asks me whether I'd like it to erase the disc first, and I say 'Yes' FWIW, I've also experimented with manually erasing the discs too, by right-clicking on the drive and choosing "Erase Disc" - which starts the same action as choosing "Tools | Drive | Erase Disc". I've tried both "Quick" and ""Full" erase modes, and didn't notice any difference in effect ... but by analogy with formatting floppies and hard drives I assume that Quick Erase just marks the disc "header" as 'empty', while "Full" tweaks every sector on the disc. That's just a guess though. You would want to "Full Erase" a disc that might have damage (e.g. scratches) - which on a floppy or hard drive would mark the damaged sectors as 'bad', and map around them so they're not used in future. I have no idea whether optical discs work in the same way. Did any of that answer your question ?
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