A user-friendly ink jet recording apparatus is capable of preventing a sudden ink exhaustion and a resulting unclear print that may result from canceling a no-ink error signal without an ink tank replacement. In the ink jet recording apparatus, in a case of a no-ink error signal, a no-ink timer is activated and time information of a no-ink state is stored in a non-volatile memory, a period from such time is measured and compared, and after the lapse of predetermined time, a no-ink error signal is generated even before a threshold value for the no-ink error signal is reached, thereby issuing a request for ink tank replacement to the user.