Olympus Optical Company, Ltd.

Osao Miyazawa

Hitoshi Ichikawa

Masanobu Nakamura

An optical recording/reproducing apparatus including an optical recording medium having an alternating area in which information may be recorded instead of the normal recording area when the information fails to be recorded in the normal recording area, and a plurality of control regions in which position information of the recording area having failed to record information and position information of the alternating area in which the information failed to be recorded is recorded instead of the recording area. The apparatus records the information in a predetermined information recording area of the optical recording area, reproduces the predetermined information, collates the information intended to be recorded with the reproduced predetermined information, and judges that the predetermined information was not correctly recorded in the predetermined recording area. The apparatus also performs alternating processing to record the information in the alternating area in case it is judged that the information was not correctly recorded, and carries out a renewal operation with at least one region remaining among a plurality of the control regions, renewing remaining control regions when the renewal operations succeed and not renewing the remaining control regions when the renewal operation fails.

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Hachioji, Japan

Osao Miyazawa