Erasing a CD-RW: Quick erase or full erase?

[BigToquex]

I've got a couple of CD-RWs laying around that I would like to erase (never erased a disc before). Just wondeing if I should do a quick or full erase?

I've always liked to do full formats on things like floppies and hard drives and not just clearing the FAT. What's best here?

 

[Sheriff]

Quick has always worked for me. I believe if you full erase it wipes the whole disc clean and possible reformats which isn't necessary if you don't have the disk full of data

 

[Davegod]

I'm guessing a full erase is only needed when your giving the cdrw to someone else and wouldnt want them accessing the pr0n you deleted off it. Quick probably just turns the flag to change the sector to empty, erm or something. I expect even with full erase someone determined could get at the original files, on a HDD i think people can get at files that have been overwritten half a dozen times or something, although people going to this sort of lengths arent going to be interested in your dodgy pr0n. No idea if the same extends to cdrw but I'd guess so to an extent.

The short of it is if there's nothing really private you want deleting on the cd, quick is fine

 

[BigToquex]

Thanks guys, I just did a quick format.

I was just thinking that maybe the disc might be more stable if it wiped the whole disc of everything, then started writing over blank space and not over top of old files. Maybe I'm just weird

 

[bocamojo]

Usually, if I'm just copying some files between computers, I'll do a quick format. If, however, I'm burning an iso or something to the RW, I'll do a full format.