To provide a recording and reproducing apparatus that recovers contents having approximately the same quality as the original contents in a short time and requiring only light processing load, at the time of (a) moving the contents from the first recording medium to the second recording medium, (b) rewriting the contents in order to disable reproduction of the contents, (c) reconstructing the original contents by recovering the contents from the second recording medium to the first recording medium. The recording and reproducing apparatus includes a move processing unit 72a and a recovery processing unit 73a. The former records reconstruction information on the second recording medium in association with the second contents, the reconstruction information being used in reconstructing one or more parts of the contents that have been rewritten in order to disable reproduction of the contents at the time of moving the contents. Also, the latter reconstructs the original contents based on the remaining contents recorded on the first recording medium by recovering the reconstruction information from the second recording medium and using the reconstruction information.