Terminal Erase a DVD

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Level 3

910 points

Terminal Erase a DVD

I have a DVD that my friend burned for me of a movie he made in iMovie. The problem is is that it doesn't work in my DVD player on my TV. He warned me that he was new to the burning procedure and that it might not work.

So as of now I have a completely useless DVD-RW. I have been working in iMovie and was hoping to be able to burn a movie I made on this same DVD-RW after erasing it. I can't, however, becuase it says I don't have sufficient privelages. Is there a way to erase it through Terminal with a sudo rm command?

If so can someone give me the command. Something like

sudo rm /John's iMovie

Would that work?

I'm guessing "/" means root directory and the CD is named "John's Movie"

iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 1.33Ghz - 60GB - 512MB - Combo Drive - 80G Lacie Ext. Firewire HD - iPod

Posted on Apr 6, 2006 2:38 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 6, 2006 5:41 PM in response to Abe

Hey Abe

Try this:

open the disc utility, insert the DVD, and when it shows up on the left hand side of the window, see if you can erase it from there.

if that doesn't work for the same permission problem, you should be able to log in as root and erase it in the same way.

I'm sure there is a way to erase it in the Terminal, but I don't know how.

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Answer 2

Abe Author

Level 3

910 points

Apr 6, 2006 6:03 PM in response to Jeffrey Lee

Doesn't work in Disk Utility when I'm logged in as Administrator.

Logged in as root. Didn't work in Disk Utility either. Tried Terminal as root, meaning it be sudo, still didn't work.

I've even selected the "Ignore permissions on this volume" box in the Get Info window. Still couldn't do it. When I tried to change the owner to me I got an error.

There has got to be a way to do this. Isn't there some way I can overwrite this ownership.

I'm willing to change the permissions in Terminal if someone can give me the command.

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Answer 3

Apr 6, 2006 6:18 PM in response to Abe

Are you sure its an RW disc?

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Answer 4

Niel

Level 10

741,851 points

Apr 6, 2006 6:27 PM in response to Abe

Try using this command:

drutil -drive 1 erase quick

or:

drutil -drive 1 erase full

The second command takes much more time(30 minutes) to run.

(11563)

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Answer 5

Abe Author

Level 3

910 points

Apr 7, 2006 1:14 PM in response to Niel

I'm 100% sure that it is an RW.

I tried the commands and Terminal said that my drive could not erase the media.

I think I've found the solution, though...stupid me. I'm working on an iBook with only a CD burner. I didn't think that I wouldn't be able to erase a DVD. I just thought I couldn't burn one. I guess when you erase the DVD there is some burning required?

When I mentioned in my original post about burning the DVD I was going to do that on my PowerMac G5 that I use at school.

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Answer 6

Niel

Level 10

741,851 points

Apr 7, 2006 1:19 PM in response to Abe

Erasing a DVD-RW is a similar process to burning it; both require that data is written to the disk. When a disk is erased, some or all of the data on it is overwritten so that the disk appears blank.

(11575)

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