#1 Burning Software

Hello,

My Starburn-based application works well on DVD+/-RW discs. I am now experimenting with using the newer multi-mode drives like the Sony DRX-830U to support DVD-RAM as well. For the most part I just use normal Win32 File I/O APIs (CopyFile, etc) for DVD-RAM discs. However, I've run into a bit of a problem when using DVD-RAM discs that are unformatted.

My previous experience with DVD-RAM discs was that they were all pre-formatted by the manufacturer, but for whatever reason these Panasonic LM-HB47LU discs seem to have no file system out of the package. Windows Explorer gives me the option to manually format by pulling up DVDForm -- an application I may have installed along time ago. That's not useful anyhow as I need my application to automatically detect unformatted DVD-RAM discs and format them to either UDF1.5/2.0 or FAT32.

So, my questions are:
* How can I detect that the disc is unformatted through StarBurn SDK?
* How do I format the disc in UDF1.5/2.0 or FAT32 through StarBurn SDK?
* Are there other Win32 APIs I haven't uncovered that would do either of the above instead of Starburn?

I am using StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_Blank() to format DVD-RW discs, just not sure if that also works on DVD-RAM and what file system would be selected.

Ideally the solution will not require any special drivers other than StarBurn SDK itself and should work across Windows XP, 2000, 2003.

Thanks!
Chris

For answer on this question wait please until monday.

Any update?

Thanks,
Chris

1) Use ReadLB(...) API call to read first 16 logical blocks from LBA offset zero. If you'd fail to read or returned buffer has all zeros - disc is either unformatted or formatted with blank file system.

2) You cannot. You can burn with UDF or we can export some FAT formatting code but Windows itself will not assume the volume as writable (for UDF you'll have to have write driver and write capable UDF implementation). For FAT it should work w/o any drivers.

3) You can format with SHFormatDrive(...) but it will pop up format dialog.

Blank(...) will do physical DVD-RAM format, no logical disc layout...