Abstract: A method and apparatus for managing defect areas of a rewritable optical recording medium. Upon receiving a write or read command from a host, the defect areas management apparatus decodes a PID of a position being currently traced by an optical pickup, generates the resultant physical sector number of the current position and compares it with a physical sector number of a defect area stored in a DMA storage unit. If the two physical sector numbers are the same, the defect areas management apparatus does not write or read data on a sector of the position traced by the optical pickup. Therefore, the defect areas management apparatus is capable of efficiently managing defect areas of the optical recording medium.