Apparatus and method for using replacement areas having certain usage directions, based on whether defects are registered as re-allocated or contiguous re-allocated defect types, in a recording medium

摘要

To prevent the degradation in read access performance to replacement data caused by not selecting appropriate replacement clusters and to suppress the waste of the number of DFL registrations. Attention is paid to the usage direction of a user data area and that of a replacement area, and in the case where one CRD-type DFL registration can be made collectively in the sequential defect management processes, a replacement area of which the usage direction is the same as that of the user data area is selected.