- Aug 2, 2002
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CDs Spinning at near the speed of Sound
- Thread starter OrionAntares
- Start date
Yes, it happens. With many of the cheap discs these days, small fractures can develop into a full blown shattered disc when spun at full speed. Many drives these days have reinforced face plates to prevent injury from fragments flying out of the drive.
I have also heard reports of discs melting in CD-ROM drives. Do you think there's any validity to those claims?
I've seen a couple of CDs explode in drives (users admitted the CDs had previous damage, and it was in fast drives), but most of the time I see cheap drives die from the huge vibrations. Once I even had a HDD fail while the CDROM drive was spinning (and vibrating heavily).
My Starcraft CD shattered :~(
My drive melted the label on my internal modem.
It seems to be speed vs quality.
I'm sure it's happened, especially in CD-R drives. Discs get very hot.
My drive melted the label on my internal modem.
It seems to be speed vs quality.
I have never seen a disk melt, but I have seen one get deformed at high speeds. I have seen someone put a cheap CD-R in his drive, and instead of shattering, it came out bigger than it went in (the diameter was just enough larger so it wouldn't sit in the tray anymore). It wasn't very circular anymore either.
That might be what people consider to be melting. I found some interesting information on the Plextor 48x drives and why they allow 48x writing, but not 48x reading by default. The article also mentions that Plextor has reinforced the drive tray to prevent fragments from flying out:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=89&Page=3 (read under "Enable Speedread").
Years ago I never would have imagined CDroms getting so fast this would happen. Aren't there multi laser drives that claim 72x read? But only under certain conditions.
There were and they were made by Kenwood. For some reason they stopped making them, I forget the reason. Maybe it just wasn't cost effective.
I heard of lots and lots of quality problems with them.
Never got to play with one myself, so I don't know how true it is, but Im guessing there's something to it since so many people complained about it.
People have posted such experiences here at Anandtech:
CD Shattered
The thread links to some pics of the shattered CD. Don't know if it means anything, but most reports I've come across of exploding CDs involve Lite-On drives.
CD Shattered
The thread links to some pics of the shattered CD. Don't know if it means anything, but most reports I've come across of exploding CDs involve Lite-On drives.
It is possible to burn a hole in a CD. My brothers CD seized the motor and the laser burned a hole through a disk. I wouldn't have thought it possible but it is.
Given the relative popularity of Lite-Ons among knowledgable computer builders, and the fact that they are the same group we're most likely to hear from, it's probably just due to the number of drives in use, IMHO. Not that I own one to comment on.
I had one of the early models. It wouldn't read cd-r media worth a crap. If you had a pressed cd with a scratch it wouldn't read it most of the time. I thought it was a great idea but they failed to make the drives reliable. There was actually a class action suit against Kenwood over the drives. When it did work it was extremely fast and quiet.
I have a 72x Kenwood CD-ROM drive, it's been in my computer since it was first released. Haven't had any problems with it. I wish Kenwood or someone else would start making multi-laser CD-ROM (or maybe even DVD) drives again, the face on this one is scratched and dirty.
Isnt the laser beam only a couple of microns in diameter? I doubt you could see the hole even if you held it up to a light.
And the laser power is only about 100 uW - I can't believe that would burn through anything, especially something reflective.
Got a pic? I'd love to see it.
I also think that the forces on a disc in a high-speed drive are higher than those quoted earlier - A 52x[*] drive can achieve 11,000 rpm. At that speed the edge of the disc is travelling at 155 mph, and exposed to a radial acceleration of over 8000 G.
[*]Nominal speed - such drives typically only achieve about 24-30x at the inner edge.
Got a pic? I'd love to see it.
I also think that the forces on a disc in a high-speed drive are higher than those quoted earlier - A 52x[*] drive can achieve 11,000 rpm. At that speed the edge of the disc is travelling at 155 mph, and exposed to a radial acceleration of over 8000 G.
[*]Nominal speed - such drives typically only achieve about 24-30x at the inner edge.
why isn't there a dip switch that allows you to set the speed of the drive to below its maximum, maybe 12x? it just gets really annoying having to listen to the vibration of the cd drive
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