Unmountable DVDs

[Nils Kassube]

O. Sinclair wrote:
> On 10/31/2013 10:22 AM, Basil Chupin wrote:
> > Read what I wrote.
> > 
> > k3b will NOT format or erase any WR disc is it has already been
> > formatted!> 

That's only partly right, i.e. there is an option to force k3b to format 
the DVD-RW anyway. But then you get a warning telling you that the 
medium may become unusable after formatting it 10 to 20 times.

> 1. he has RW DVD with old content, he wants to wipe/erase/reformat
> whatever to reuse it as a blank DVD
> 2. using K3b and the menu Tools/Format-Erase K3b does something and
> then ejects the DVD
> 3. on reinserting the DVD the system does not react to it
> 4. if taken to a windows system and same procedure done by whatever
> software DVD is again reacognised by Kubuntu
> 
> I have no RW DVD so I can not do this at the moment but I have several
> times done it with CD RW discs without this problem.

Please note that DVD-RW are different in that you have to format a CD-RW 
before writing new data to it, but you just write new data to a DVD-RW, 
like Basil wrote.

> When I
> reinserted the CD my Kubuntu would recognise it and the
> device-notifyer give me some action options (Dolphin, K3b and so on)

When I tried that with a newly formatted CD-RW, the device notifier 
would not offer the option to open it with Dolphin, only two options to 
open it with k3b. And it was named "Empty CD-RW" (my translation). IOW 
it was unmountable. And I think k3b may not write a file system because 
that would be the same as writing new data to the disc. Actually I 
think, a CD-RW isn't formatted but rather erased.

I also tried it with a DVD+RW which I reformatted (with the force option 
of k3b) and the device notifier now doesn't offer any options to open it 
and it is named "Empty DVD+RW" (my translation). Again the disk is 
unmountable because there is no file system on the disk.

My conclusion: If you format a rewritable DVD or CD with k3b, there is 
no filesystem on it and therefore you can't mount it. And I have no idea 
what exactly Windows does with the DVD-RW if you format it, but it must 
write some file system to it.

And if it matters: I tried all that with Kubuntu 12.04 with KDE 4.11.2 
from the backports-ppa.


Nils