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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.

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    The default application for burning CDs and DVDs on Ubuntu is brasero. You should look at its documentation for more info. But I strongly believe that there's no difference whether you burn a CD-R or CD-RW, all programs should support both. The only thing that matters is your optical drive. If it's an older one, it might not be capable of all different disk types.
    – Byte Commander
    Nov 27, 2015 at 18:56
  • @ByteCommander The problem isn't really creating a rewritable disk. Sorry if I did not mention that. I was just wondering if Ubuntu was capable of reading data on the disk as well as changing the data stored on it. Let's just assume that the disk is already formatted for rewritable use. Nov 27, 2015 at 19:06
  • I did not need to try it out yet, but I would be very very surprised if that would not work. Just try it out, I'm 99% sure that if your drive supports CD-RW and DVD-RW, you can do this with Ubuntu tools just as well as with any Windows tool.
    – Byte Commander
    Nov 27, 2015 at 19:16

2 Answers 2

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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 http://www.g-loaded.eu/2005/11/10/packet-writing-on-cdrw-and-dvdrw-media/

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.

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Long question, short answer :)

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But not in the same manner as a hard drive. For this you would need DVD-RAM.

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