Erasing a rewritable CD, DVD or Blu-ray in Burn by Zaweba
How to erase a rewritable disc in Burn by Zaweba, when to pick a quick or a full erase, and how to get more use from RW and RE discs.
Rewritable discs are made to be used again. Before you can reuse one that already holds files, you clear it, and in Burn by Zaweba that is the job of Erase a rewritable disc.
It is a short tool with one real decision: quick or full.
Where to find it
Erase a rewritable disc is on the Disc menu, and the same job is on the Tools menu as Erase disc. Put the rewritable disc in your writer and open either one. Erasing needs a CD, DVD or Blu-ray writer, since it changes the disc itself.
Which discs can be erased
Only rewritable discs can be erased: CD-RW, DVD-RW and DVD+RW, and BD-RE. Write-once discs, such as CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R, can't be cleared once they hold data. If you aren't sure what is in the drive, the status bar shows the disc, and Tools, Drive information gives more detail.
Quick or full
A quick erase is the everyday choice. It is fast and makes the disc ready to burn again.
A full erase takes longer, because it goes over the whole disc. Choose it when a quick erase isn't enough, for example when a disc has been giving trouble, or when you would like the whole surface cleared before handing the disc on.
Neither choice changes what kind of disc it is. After either erase, the disc is still the same rewritable disc with the same capacity, ready for a data disc, an audio CD or an image.
If in doubt, try quick first. If the next burn or its check has problems, a full erase is the next step to try.
Before you erase
Make sure the right drive and disc are selected. On a PC with more than one drive, a glance at the status bar confirms which writer Burn will use, and that the disc in it is the rewritable one you meant to clear rather than a disc you want to keep.
Check what is on the disc. Erasing can't be undone, so open the disc in Explorer and make sure nothing on it is the only copy of something you need.
Label rewritable discs by their use rather than their contents. A disc marked as a weekly transfer disc is easier to reuse than one whose label still describes files that are long gone.
Getting more from rewritable discs
Rewritable discs suit jobs that repeat: moving files between computers without a network, a disc that carries a week's work home, or test burns before you commit to a write-once disc. For backups you intend to keep for years, write-once discs are the usual choice, since they can't be erased by accident.
Leave the check after burning on when you reuse a rewritable disc. Discs wear with use, and reading the disc back after each burn is the best way to notice when one is near the end of its life. When a disc starts failing its checks after a full erase, retire it.
Erasing as part of a cycle
Erasing is the start of a cycle. After erasing, burn a data disc or an image as usual. Burn also offers multisession, where a disc is left open and more files are added later, which can suit you better than erasing when you only want to add to what is there. Burn by Zaweba gives you both, so choose erasing when you want a clean start.
