Disk apparatus including notifying of cleaning timing and control method thereof

An optical disk apparatus, comprising:

• disk rotating means for rotating an optical disk medium;
• optical head means for reading at least information from the optical disk medium rotated by said disk rotating means by projecting light thereon;
• disk mounting/dismounting means for mounting said optical disk medium accommodated in a cartridge on a disk rotating shaft when said optical disk medium is inserted, and removing said optical disk medium from said rotating shaft and ejecting said removed optical disk medium according to a medium ejection instruction;
• first counter means;
• second counter means;
• third counter means;
• rotation time measuring means for counting rotating pulses which are generated from said disk rotating means by said first counter means, disk mounting/dismounting measuring means for counting the number of ejection times of the optical disk medium due to said cartridge mounting/dismounting means by said third counter means, and each time a count value of said third counter means reaches a predetermined number of ejection times, adding a count value of said first counter means to a count value of said second counter means and updating and clearing said first counter means;
• and
• cleaning management means for clearing said second counter means and transmitting a cleaning request signal of the optical disk apparatus to an upper apparatus when the count value of said second counter means reaches a predetermined value corresponding to a predetermined time at which a cleaning of the optical head means is necessary and displaying said cleaning request signal and for further setting cleaning request flag information.