REPRODUCING LASER POWER SETTING METHOD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent a level drop of a regenerative signal and reproducing impossible at time of reproducing by always setting optimum reproducing laser power and preventing data destruction at time of recording even when an ambient temp. in a device is changed. SOLUTION: A magneto-optical recording medium having a recording layer and a reproducing layer on a substrate is used. The data are recorded on the recording layer of the magneto-optical recording medium with recording density smaller than a beam size of a laser beam. The data recorded on the recording layer of the magneto-optical recording medium with the recording density smaller than the beam size are reproduced by setting the reproducing laser power to a suitable value. A reproducing power correction part 74 decides the optimum value of the reproducing laser power used in a reproducing part 68 by performing the reproducing operation of the magneto-optical recording medium. For example, at correcting the reproducing laser power, when the use temperature of the device is reduced in a degree of a change for the last temperature, the correction processing of the reproducing power at the fixed time interval is stepped until the temperature change exceeds a prescribed value.