1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a write-once recording medium comprising a management information area for recording management information for managing a recorded state and a user data area for recording user data, and a method and apparatus for recording data onto the write-once recording medium, and a method and apparatus for reproducing data from the write-once recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical discs are information recording media that are compatible between a plurality of apparatuses. Examples of optical discs include, for example, the CD which was originally developed for recording music and recently are widely used for recording data, DVD which was developed for recording digital video and are rapidly becoming widespread, and next-generation optical discs which are currently being developed for recording high-quality video, such as for high-definition television or the like.
These optical discs are roughly categorized into three groups in terms of the recording/reproduction method: a read-only type; a write-once type; and a rewritable type. Write-once optical discs are made of a recording material, from which recorded data cannot be erased. Data can be recorded once in the same place on the medium. For example, CD-R and DVD-R are write-once optical discs. Write-once optical discs are also referred to as write-once-many-read optical discs. For rewritable optical discs, data can be recorded many times in the same place on the medium. For example, CD-RW and DVD-RAM are rewritable optical discs.
Write-once optical discs are not rewritable due to the characteristics of the recording material. Therefore, it is necessary to manage recorded areas and unrecorded areas. In a CD-R, the recording start position and the last recorded position of each music composition are managed so as to incrementally record in units of a music composition. The unit of a music composition is called a track (hereinafter also referred to as a “TRACK” so as to distinguish it from a track indicating a groove). In a CD-R, data is recorded sequentially in units of a track from its inner periphery to its outer periphery. A plurality of recorded TRACKs are managed as a session including a plurality of recorded TRACKs (hereinafter referred to as a “SESSION”). An area for storing management information for managing a recorded state is called a program management area (hereinafter also referred to as a “PMA”).
For DVD-R, an RZone (corresponding to a TRACK of CD), a Border (corresponding to a SESSION of CD), and a recording management area (hereinafter also referred to as an “RMA”; corresponding to a PMA of CD) are defined (for example, SFF 8090i standard, “Mt. Fuji Command for Multimedia Devices”, Section 4.16 entitled “Recording for DVD-R media”).
There is a technique for applying a method for managing areas allocated on DVD-R compatibly to read-only DVD-ROM (for example, Japanese Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-148166).
In a data structure recorded in an RMA of DVD-R, a recording management data (hereinafter also referred to as an “RMD”) is defined.
FIG. 23 shows a field 3 of an RMD. The field 3 of an RMD stores information indicating the positions of a maximum of 512 Borders (corresponding to a SESSION of CD).
FIG. 24 shows a field 4 of an RMD. FIG. 25 shows fields 5 to 12 of an RMD. The field 4, and the fields 5 to 12 of an RMD store information indicating the positions of a maximum of 2302 RZone's (corresponding to a TRACK of CD).
However, in conventional techniques for managing recording areas, the number of recording areas to be managed is currently already large. If the conventional techniques are applied without modification to a larger capacity of future media, management information is adversely enlarged.