Unmountable DVDs

[O. Sinclair]

On 10/31/2013 03:26 PM, Nils Kassube wrote:
> 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.
>
thanks for the clarifications - I have only done this with CD RW, tried 
it now just to check actually. It works just as you describe it. If 
DVD-RW are different then I am not of much help