I have a Panasonic RAM disc and after I erased a recording and tried to make a new recording the machine said it had to be formatted again. When I tried repeatedly it said formatting failed. I have two Panasonics and a Pioneer recorder and all them could not reformat the disc for use again. I have used many Panasonic RAM's and this never happened before. What would cause this disc to do this? I have used this disc a number of times so it wasn't new but it wasn't that old either.

I had one RAM disc that was starting to act up & gently washed it with dishwashing detergent & dried with a microfiber cloth. No problems afterwards. I got the info about washing RAM discs from an older posting. Try it & see what happens.

Tried to clean the disc--it didn't work. I really wanted to know why this happened in the first place. It worked fine until I erased a recording.

You can try the "jjeff saliva" test, which helps load a disc properly for burning when it's slipping on the rubber gripper due to a buildup of dust and finger grease.

Each time you load a blank or still-recordable disc, the machine has to read the media ID, etc. and perform a series of tests to determine best write strategy, etc., etc. If the disc is slipping during this time, it causes an error.

Anyway, moisten the bottom surface of the disc, only around the clear center near the hub, with a little bit of saliva. Load disc and see if that helps hold the disc in place for the perf. tests.

If that works, DigaDo has lots of info in one or more threads on cleaning the hub on Panny DVDRs.

What you describe has happened to me two or three times. I have no explanation for it, but each time it rendered the disk unusable. I think it was a formatting failure of some kind, but as to exactly what happened or why, I have no idea. I was told the "Format Failed" and then the disk was unusable.:(

If your PC is RAM compatible did you try reformatting the disc in the PC?
Disc slippage can cause a R disc to become unusable but a reformat has always brought back a RW or RAM disc for me. I have far more experience with -RWs though.

I do have a -ram capable drive, but it won't read the disks I have, so I think either the model I have is defective, or just poorly made. I have decided to get another drive.

My newer Vista computer isn't advertised as having a RAM compatible drive although on it's front it says "LiteScribe DVD Super Multi Drive/CD Writer". I can see the files on a RAM disc but it won't play. Someone said my PC's probably missing the correct codec to play RAM discs but I don't really do it anyway.

What you describe has happened to me two or three times. I have no explanation for it, but each time it rendered the disk unusable. I think it was a formatting failure of some kind, but as to exactly what happened or why, I have no idea. I was told the "Format Failed" and then the disk was unusable.:(

This must have been what happened to my disc. Nothing can get it to work again. My PC can't use RAM discs so I can't try that.