The questions asks all. I searched everywhere but found nothing related to the specific topic.
I don't have problems creating a rewritable disk (assuming I already have a disk formatted as such). Just asking if Ubuntu was capable of reading and changing data stored on the disk.
32 Answers
Yes, the Linux kernel will use /dev/srX like a hard disk. See below for DVD-RW extra needs.
But performance will be poor and probably miserable noises will emerge when operating. The ususal hard disk writers are not aware of the very long seek times and the quite limited number of overwrites before a block on the medium goes bad.
Theoretically best suited would be DVD-RAM, Mount Rainier formatted DVD+RW (MRW), and BD-RE, because they have Defect Management, which can replace a few bad block by blocks from the Spare Area. In practice optical media often fail earlier with Defect Management than without.
Capable of random read-write access are: Formatted CD-RW, formatted DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, BD-RE, and formatted BD-R with format type Pseudo-Overwrite.
Formatted DVD-RW need the pktcdvd frontend driver which takes care of the peculiar 32 kB granularity of the media. This driver is recommended for CD-RW, too. It gets set up by e.g.
pktsetup pktcdvd0 /dev/sr0
and will then be used as pseudo hard disk device
/dev/pktcdvd/pktcdvd0
See also
Said this, please be aware that sequential writing to optical media by a burn program is much less problematic than random-access read-write operation.
Long question, short answer :)
But not in the same manner as a hard drive. For this you would need DVD-RAM.
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