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CD exploded in the drive

Mudbug

Mudbug

Administrator emeritus
Original poster
Jun 28, 2002
3,849
1
North Central Colorado
I've never seen this happen, but I was using an older CD in a high-speed DVD drive, and apparently was spinning so fast that it put too much strain on it. Thankfully I wasn't sitting in front of it, because when it broke, it spewed out chips of the CD, along with the front panel of the drive, right into my chair and on the floor.

I'm posting this because I'm wondering if anyone else has had this happen...

P1010002.JPG

P1010003.jpg
 
Awesome! Well yeah fortunately you weren't sitting behind it. I've read somewhere that don't expect cd burning speeds to go very far beyond what they are now (52x?) since the cd would reach speeds of over 200mph in the drive and any imperfections, scratches, or cracks would send the disc spinning out of control, thus causing it to fly apart in a spectacular array of shards.
 
Originally posted by Gymnut
Awesome! Well yeah fortunately you weren't sitting behind it. I've read somewhere that don't expect cd burning speeds to go very far beyond what they are now (52x?) since the cd would reach speeds of over 200mph in the drive and any imperfections, scratches, or cracks would send the disc spinning out of control, thus causing it to fly apart in a spectacular array of shards.
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I read of an experimental CD drive that read at 100x. They installed multiple lasers in it and ran it at a lower speed. Then they combined the data the lasers read. I would love to see the data transfer from one of those models.
 
There have been multi-beam CD drives on the market for some time now. What they are worried about is not the reading, but the writing, because the laser for writing is much more powerful than the reading laser (or just at a different setting), hitting an imperfection can cause the beam to split, and at high speeds, cut the disk.

Also 120X readable drives are available, however with current interconnects, 24X is the current maximum of any throughput.

TEG
 
wow. its good that you weren't hurt or anything. i know i nevre had anything like that happen. i've nver even thought of something like that happening.
 
well this was "extreme spinning" as you called it, and probably well above the "speed rating" of the disk. It just spun up and shattered.

and I'm in the camp with you guys. First thought was Holy Crap!. Second thought was. Oh man, there goes my drive. Third thought - whoa - cool. :)
 
wow cool!! :D :cool:

yeah, i've heard of this as well... luckily none of the Apple protables will ever have this problem. :p :rolleyes:

i can't see CD drives getting much faster than they are now... 52x i mean.
 
Originally posted by LouCFur
I think you all will enjoy this... it certinly applies to the subject at hand

http://www.powerlabs.org/cdexplode.htm

:)
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:D Wow, i might said impressing what you can do with a cd :D LOL.

i already have heard that a cd could explode in a highspeed cd-drive, that happened to a friend of mine. He only heard that his drive spinning faster and faster and then with one bang his drive was end up ! The whole CD exploded in his drive and damaged it. Nothing happened to him, but he have to buy a new drive. After asking him why this should happened he answered, that he doesn't know, but the cd was very old and have many scraches on it.

Be warned using old CDs with a lot of scratches on it !! :p
 
Another cool trick...

This was many years ago and it provided much useless entertainment. We had a used microwave nobody wanted, and a bunch of AOL CDs. Someone had the bright idea of making a stacked CD sculpture inside the microwave. Then close the door, activate, and stand back. Big blue and green sparks and instant plastic melting within a radioactive thunderbolt. Clean insides of microwave and repeat until microwave no longer works. :D

I think my sperm count is still normal thankfully :D
 
That link looks like a good way to dispose of CD's that contain sensitive data. :) No way anyone could recover that!
 
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