DVD+RW

Clarifications

Any time you put files onto a CD or DVD, they're stored as read only if you've finalized the CD/DVD. You can't change them while they're stored there. When you copy them back to your hard drive, simply right click and choose properties, then uncheck the read only attribute.

In the case of Images and Recordable Optical media they are generally written IN a Single Session Mode to prevent the original Images being lost when you add to the Drive. So ideally you write enough images to the Blank Disc to nearly fill it and then you have them available for up to 5 years if the Disc's are correctly stored. Somewhat shorted if they are not correctly stored.

Writing to RW type Disc's actually makes for an Expensive Blank that you use and even worse a shorter Life expectancy of the Data that you write to the Disc as these RW Disc's are erased by heat. So if you store the disc's poorly they will start to degrade quickly and while you can erase and rewrite them [i]sometimes[/i] easily if you leave them too long the images will be so badly degraded as to be useless.

Kodak recommends that you recopy your Photos from CD at the 5 Year Mark or under depending on how they are stored. They do not give any recommendations for RW Disc's as no sane person would use this Temporary Media to store important images because it's Too Expensive and even worse just part way permanent.

Even under ideal conditions the Claimed number of 100 Rewrites is very hard to achieve and a number considerably less than that is common while the images are degraded when the Disc starts to reach the upper limit of the available number of rewrites.

As for Unlocking it you can't as such this is this way because of the way that they where written. If you want to add to a existing Disc you need to change the way that you record the Disc's and even then it may not be possible to reuse a RW Disc. This all depends on what software was used to write the disc's originally.

You can however chose to not record the Disc's in Single Mode and add to a Disc after you have finalized one session but quite often this results in anything but the last session written to the Disc to be invisible to any Reader but the one it was written on and even then the lower sessions may remain invisible to the end user.

I would recommend that you do not even try to rewrite these disc's and better still buy One use only Disc's as they are cheaper and last longer than RW Disc's ever could.

Col

With reference to a DVD+RW it is NOT each file that is rewritable - it is only the ENTIRE DVD.

So if you are trying to delete or replace a particular image file YOU CAN'T. You can only invoke the 'rewritable' capability when you do it to the DVD as an entire disc.

The nature of most CDs and DVDs are read only. That means that you cannot write on that media after you have burned the CD or DVD. You can view the files but not make changes to them.

But you can copy any of the files to your hard drive and then you can rename them (or not) and make changes to them. After modifying the files, you can burn them to a different CD or DVD.

Sometimes, when you copy a file from a DVD or CD to a disk it will still have the read-only attribute. You can fix this by right-clicking on the file in the file explorer (before opening it) and selecting properties. At the bottom of the GENERAL tab, deselect the read-only check box.