Abstract: There are provided an optical disk substrate formatted according to the zone formatted system, method for initialization thereof, and driving apparatus for initialization of the optical disk. The optical disk substrate is initialized while at least one track in the vicinity of the inner peripheral side and/or the outer peripheral side in the radial direction of the boundary between an optional zone and another zone situated on the outer peripheral side is left unused as a recording area. By virtue of this construction, at least one of the tracks having a high possibility of bringing about the pit shift or double transfer is left unused as a recording area. Accordingly, the information stored in a recording area can be read out without being influenced by the occurrence of the pit shift or double transfer, and thus it is possible to get rid of the occurrence of a burst error caused by such pit shift or double transfer.