i have a frontech cd-rw disc which i am not able to erase/format thru Nero / Alcohol / Winxp. The cd writer is of Sony.

i tried erasing at minimum speed thru various softwares but to no avail. the disc seems to be fine. there is just one small file on it. neither can i erase the disk nor can i add new contents (multisession disk).

Alcohol 'erased' the disk, but it wasnt really erased. Ditto with winxp (which uses roxio software). Nero hangs while erasing.

Is there a possibility that the disk is somehow locked and cant be erased or formatted ?

I am attaching the log file generated by Nero.

I'm not absolutely certain, but from your log it looks as if the disc was written to as a CD-R, rather than a CD-RW. If this is the case, then it will be impossible to erase the file, or to format the disc.

David

I didnt even know something like this was possible - burning 'as a' cd-r on cd-rw disc, i mean ..why would anyone do such a thing ?..

..anyways, thanks for the knowledge.

No, I didn't know it was possible until I did it by accident!! :D

There is no reason why you shouldnt be able to erase it if it's truely a CDRW disc; and yes-not only can you burn a cdrw as a " cdr "-but i do that all the time ( you're not actually making it a cdr, your just closing the disc, unlike a standard cdrw burn where the file system is left " open " ).

I do " cdr " a cdrw when i making a boot disk or OS install disc to make sure it'll work-then when i'm sure it works i simply .iso it; erase the disc ( think of it like a low level format ) then proceed to use it as a regular cdrw ( after fromatting it of course ) later on.

The only reason i can think of that you can't erase this disc is if it isnt an actual cdrw media.

They are 2 different physical types of discs ( the dyes & layering ).

The CD-RW is from a reputed company. i chekced out their website www.frontechonlne.com but didnt find any contact info. I dont care much about the monetary loss, but am a bit curious as to why i cant erase/format the disc.

i too have a sony cd-rw which i might have re-written more then 50 times but now it does not erase nor i can add more data and it has lots of space.....my cd writer is of sony and i use nero....i too was searching for samething.....may be the cd is thoroughly used and coz of scratches.......:rolleyes: