A medium management method is disclosed. A removable medium is conveyed to a drive section when the removable medium is inserted into a medium accommodation section. The drive section reproduces and reads information from the medium and determines whether the medium is a first medium or a second medium on which data externally or internally created have been recorded according to the information read by the drive section. A partial reproduction operation is performed according to an edit list recorded on the first medium and the reproduced data are transferred to a pre-designated host system when the inserted medium is the first medium. The second medium is registered to a database when the determined result denotes that the inserted medium is the second medium. The medium is returned to the medium accommodation section after one of the partial reproduction operation and the database registration process has been completed.