What does Prepare Do?

[zepolli1]

What exactly does A dvd recorder do when you put in a blank disk to "prepare it" ? As mentioned in another post, my lite-on attempted to "prepare" a disk which was not blank and I lost 12 episodes of my kids favorite shows. Every disk recovery package I have used can not find anything on the disk. The best I can get is a "corrupt disk" message from windows. Isn't just the table of contents just being erased? And shouldn't the data still be there since its only a dvd+R?

[ROF]

You didn't attempt to burn anything or had a burn setup when it did this to the disc? It just erased it upon insertion. I had this happen once but I was searching for a blank disc after Nero complained about a disc I had inserted. It was waiting for a disc and I happened to insert a disc containing data. It complained, spit it out and the disc was unusable from that point on.

[oldfart13]

Yes, the Liteons apparently write an initial TOC (table of contents) which would destroy the old one if the disc had not been finalized. I realized this when I tried to use a disc that had been "prepared" but I had not used in my computer burner. That burner spit the disc out and said it was not empty. It was still usable in the Daytek/Liteon 5001 though as it had not been finalized.