"
now i'm still missing a thorough description of the defect-management
which pretty much is the only reason for the RAM's existence compared
to RWs
I agree that defect management is a valuable feature of DVD-RAM.
I would put its ability to record to the DVD-RAM just as if it were a hard drive [drag & drop] as its most appealing feature for me.
The combination of its hard drive emulation together with its defect management, along with a reuse cycle life as high as 100,000 times and that's why there is always a DVD-RAM in one of my burners ready to back up that important file-right now.
Windows XP does not require any additional burning software to do this[with FAT 32 formatted DVD-RAM discs].
No Nero InCd with its eccentricities and failure rates.
For reliable data back-up to DVD, IMHO DVD-RAM is much better than DVD-RW.
From:
http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/dvd-ram.cfm
"The most important thing about blank DVD media is reliability. Consumers have to be sure that their data is safe. Experts have agreed that users are less likely to have technical problems if they choose DVD-RAM over other Re-Writeable formats. There is no need for manual data verification via special software, with DVD-RAM, hardware verification of written data is automatic. If you have accidentally damaged your blank disc and you burn data to it, it is automatically compared with the original data. If it can not be verified, the DVD-RAM drive will use a spare area on the disc to write the unreadable data again and run verification again. This offers the ultimate safety of your data."