Host Initiated Background Formatting Of Optical Medium

A host processing device having an optical drive, the host processing device comprising:

• at least one processor;
• a memory connected to the at least one processor;
• a file system, included in a storage device, having instructions for the at least one processor to read from and write to an optical medium mounted in the optical drive, the file system further comprising:
• instructions for determining whether the optical medium is not fully background formatted;
• instructions for initiating and controlling a process for background formatting the optical medium when the optical medium has been determined to have no background formatting;
• and
• instructions for pausing the background formatting of the optical medium to permit a user read or a user write with respect to the optical medium.

A tangible machine-readable medium having recorded thereon a file system including instructions for at least one processor of a host processing device, the instructions comprising:

• instructions for blocking user input/output operations, with respect to an optical medium mounted in an optical drive;
• instructions for querying a number of free blocks of the optical medium and a next writable address;
• instructions for background formatting the optical medium starting from the next writable address;
• instructions for determining whether a user read or a user write is blocked during the background formatting;
• and
• instructions for synchronizing the optical medium with an optical drive cache, pausing the background formatting, and unblocking the user input/output operations, with respect to the optical medium, when the user read or the user write is determined to be blocked.