Optical disc drive having opc control unit for controlling the level of power of the laser beam for recording and reading data from an optical disc

Abstract

An optical disc drive has an OPC control unit that records the signal to a plurality of frames in the predetermined test area on the optical disc using a plurality of recording power values and repeatedly records the signal to another plurality of frames in the predetermined test area on the optical disc using the plurality of recording power values, and calculates an average strength value of the reflected light of the plurality of strength values of the reflected lights from the plurality of frames in which frames the signal is recorded with the same recording power value, and the average strength value of the reflected light corresponding to the optimum recording power value is determined as an optimum strength value of the reflected light , during the OPC operation, and a recording power control unit that modifies the recording power value by a predetermined value in order to make the strength value of the reflected light from the pit portion during recording move toward the optimum strength value of the reflected light, during the running OPC operation. As a result, the present invention provides the optical disc drive, in which data can be recorded with an optimum recording power over the whole disc and both a jitter and an error rate of the reproduced signal are kept low.