How to erase a rewritable disc

Choose Erase a rewritable disc in Burn by Zaweba, from the Disc menu or Tools > Erase disc, and pick a quick or a full erase. Burn clears the disc so it can be burned again. It works with rewritable CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays.

Rewritable discs are built to be used many times. Erasing them is how you get a blank back.

Quick erase or full erase

A quick erase clears the disc's table of contents so the drive treats it as blank. It takes a short time, and for reusing a disc for your next burn it's usually all you need.

A full erase goes over the whole disc. It takes much longer, but it leaves nothing of the old contents behind. Choose it if you're passing the disc to someone else and it held anything private, or if a disc that was quick-erased gives trouble when you burn to it.

Doing the erase

Put the rewritable disc in the writer. The status bar at the bottom of Burn shows the writer and the disc in it, which is a quick way to confirm Burn has seen the right one. If you've just inserted it and nothing shows, press F5 or use View > Look for drives again.

Open Erase a rewritable disc from Disc > Erase a rewritable disc or Tools > Erase disc, choose quick or full, and start. Progress shows on the taskbar button and the tray icon, and a chime and notification tell you when it's done, unless you've turned the sound off in Settings.

Take care to put in the right disc. Erasing can't be undone, so if the disc holds anything you might want, copy it off first. Images > Read disc to image can save a data disc as an ISO before you wipe it.

If the disc refuses to erase, check that it really is rewritable. A CD-R, DVD-R or BD-R looks much the same as its rewritable cousin, but it can only be written once and can't be erased by any program. The letters RW or RE on the disc or its packaging tell you it's the kind you can wipe and use again.

Rewritable discs and what they suit

Rewritable discs suit jobs that change: a disc you carry between computers, a test burn before using a write-once disc, or a temporary copy. They're less good as long-term backups, since a disc that can be erased can be erased by mistake. For backups, write-once discs and the Backup Assistant are the better pair.

You can also add to a rewritable or write-once disc without erasing it, if it was left open. Burn the first lot with finalise turned off, and later use Disc > Add files to a disc, which imports the earlier session and keeps it.

Not every drive writes every rewritable type. Tools > Drive information lists what your drive reads and writes, along with its firmware and write speeds, so you can check before buying discs. Erasing, like burning, needs a writer, though plenty of Burn's image tools work without one.