[timkolb]

Hope you can help me out. I just bought an iMac 800MZ (w/ the new superdrive). Under the apple systems preference it states that the drive is a CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW. I can write to a DVD-RW, but I can't erase the disk like I can with a CD-RW. What's up ...

[joe]

I have a new Formac Firewire DVD-RW drive (4x Pioneer A05) for my G4 Cube running Jag. I just erased 2 of my DVD-RW discs using Apple's Disk Utility which is located under Applications/Utilities. You have to click on the DVD-R drive name and not the actual DVD-R disc name. Otherwise the Erase feature is ghosted out. Also, I haven't tried the "Quick Erase" feature yet. I assume it's faster, but I wanted to completely wipe the DVD-RW discs. Hope that helps. If not, maybe you could go into more detail about how far you got in the Disk Utility.......joe

[DAlex]

The main problem is that disk burner (built into the OS) does not support DVD-RW erasing. Hopefully it will be a future upgrade.

In the meantime you will have to do as Joe says and use Disc Copy, which has the erase feature (it worked for my iMac dvd 800), or use Toast.

DAlex

[timkolb]

Originally posted by joe:
I have a new Formac Firewire DVD-RW drive (4x Pioneer A05) for my G4 Cube running Jag. I just erased 2 of my DVD-RW discs using Apple's Disk Utility which is located under Applications/Utilities. You have to click on the DVD-R drive name and not the actual DVD-R disc name. Otherwise the Erase feature is ghosted out. Also, I haven't tried the "Quick Erase" feature yet. I assume it's faster, but I wanted to completely wipe the DVD-RW discs. Hope that helps. If not, maybe you could go into more detail about how far you got in the Disk Utility.......joe

[timkolb]

Originally posted by DAlex:
The main problem is that disk burner (built into the OS) does not support DVD-RW erasing. Hopefully it will be a future upgrade.

In the meantime you will have to do as Joe says and use Disc Copy, which has the erase feature (it worked for my iMac dvd 800), or use Toast.

DAlex

I did as Joe said, only the quick erase feature was highlighted. When I went to use the the disk again, it said it was unuseable and contained no directory. I tried to erase with Toast (Using OS9) and it tried to erase the disk (after 20 minutes) then reported an error. Any other software out there?

[joe]

Originally posted by timkolb:
I did as Joe said, only the quick erase feature was highlighted. When I went to use the the disk again, it said it was unuseable and contained no directory. I tried to erase with Toast (Using OS9) and it tried to erase the disk (after 20 minutes) then reported an error. Any other software out there?

I just erased my 3rd DVD-RW using Jag and my Formac Devideon (4x Pioneer A05). It works fine, just do NOT use the "quick" erase feature. And yes, eraseing a DVD-RW takes a LONG TIME. The normal erase zeroes out every single bit on the disc (4.7gigs worth). I didn't time it, it was more than a half hour though. I just let it erase in the background while I surfed the net and answered email.

Try it again but don't use quick erase.......joe

[joe]

Originally posted by DAlex:
The main problem is that disk burner (built into the OS) does not support DVD-RW erasing. Hopefully it will be a future upgrade.

In the meantime you will have to do as Joe says and use Disc Copy, which has the erase feature (it worked for my iMac dvd 800), or use Toast.

Actually, I used "Disk Utility" which is located in the Applications/utilities folder. It's worked every time so far - though it does take a very long time. I'd guess anywhere from a half hour to an hour. The next time I'll try to remember to time it. But it erases just fine running in the background while running most other software apps. I'm not sure I'd try erasing a DVD-RW while running a very demanding app like JediKnightII or similar.

Just a suggestion regarding discburner - maybe it's not a good idea for Apple to add a DVD-RW erase feature to discburner directly. This is because discburner only pops up when an unused disc is inserted. Wouldn't it be more convenient if Apple added an erase command to the contextual menus? So that if you right click on a DVD-RW or CD-RW disc, an option for erase is one commands available. That would be a real timesaver instead of digging through your apps folder or dragging yet another program to the dock.......joe

[DAlex]

Originally posted by joe:
Actually, I used "Disk Utility" which is located in the Applications/utilities folder.

Cool, hadn't realized that disk utility could do it as well I used disk copy and that worked fine too.