I happened across this article today... I'm not sure what to make of it! I've never experienced anything even close to this:

CDR drive speed dangers!

Interesting. I've seen cd's breaking into pieces inside a cd-rom, but I never heard of shattered parts flying and killing people.

I was at a friends house a few months ago, eating toast downstairs, when, *suddenly, as if by magic*, there was a loud bang upstairs (I mean Grenade-gone-off loud)

Went upstairs and there were bits of CD and CD Rom drive ^everywhere^, embedded in the wall etc (he left some shards in for humour value).

Lucky I like toast


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Note that the CD in question was a 18pence "Indian" CDR...

"I haven't experienced an exploding CD but did have my copy of Neverwinter Nights somehow levitate out of the CD holder and bury itself in the nether parts of my machine with a nasty metallic chunk," says Queensland PC user Neil Booth.

Huh... I've been told Neverwinter Nights kicks butt but this is ridiculous.
Anyway

aaah, my first quad-speed cd-drive loved to shoot at me, too... when I opened it, sometimes the cd was still spinning, and it was ---- fzzzt, a flying disk in my room... quite funny, but if it had been a 52 speed... I think I'd been death...

the quad speed "only" scratched some cd's

If I understand the article well, it assumes disk are torn apart due to the fast revolution speeds. Personally I have found another reason for causing big bangs (yes, I once experienced this myself ). In my AOPEN CRW3248 (48x) it happens that a CD start 'trembling' during revolution, and if it becomes too much of a 'dance' there is a huge BANG

Seems "possible," then again somebody may have been watching the Hellraiser 3 movie just a little too much.

No CD can stand a speed of 64x without exploding : http://temp.winglitch.com:81/articles/exploding_cd.htm

Pioneer 72x drives use three laser pickups and therefore spins at 24x.

Yes, that is exactly the point... CDs are made cheaply... nobody goes and tests every CD to make sure that it is perfectly balanced. They wobble quite a bit, and some discs are far worse. You can tell when your drive makes a loud buzzing noise instead of a low whirr. The faster the disc spins, the more it wobbles. If it spins fast enough, the disc is torn apart. The wobbling is a result of the disc's poor construction. Arguably, they could make CDs stronger to withstand faster rotation speeds, but then you would only be able to use brand new discs in new drives, so it would be pointless.

Similiar to the keenwood 72x ? that uses one pickup who reads 5 tracks at once. ? I don think pioner has 3 picups but rather one pickup that reads 3 tracks or more.

what are the modle number of this dries as i have searhed for the kennwods 72x for yerars in scandinavia with no luck

Sorry, I meant Kenwood, not Pioneer.

The material of which CDs are made of is not stone rigid... I wonder if the central hole doesn't expand as the spinning speed increases. A tiny bit would be enough to dangerously off center the CD.

I have seen CDs with the hole in the center that was rather egg shaped. that puppy would cause things to shake somewhat. It was a blank Memorex CD, needless to say it was tough to burn anything on. It was far enough out of round to plainly see the flaw from a distance. I have had Memorex CDs that couldn't be written to, balanced or not. The burner wouldn't make it past the laser power calibration phase, it would just spit the cd back out after 10 seconds. Needless to say I don't buy anything made by Memorex anymore, thier stuff is shit. I had a Creative 40x that loved to spit out the CD while it was still spinning, did wonders for the CD. Wouldn't read a CD most of the time either. Finally on day I took it out, and while wearing work boots proceeded to flatten the basturd. Well, I felt better anyway. Bought a Plextor after that, haven't looked back since.

Exploding CDs put a whole new meaning to "UFO".

Oh I see. Thanks

Striking is the huge 'wobbling' increase as soon as spin speed increases. It's really remarkable on my ltn403 and aopen crw3248 (even though the speeds do not differ that much: 48 vs. 40)

A friend of mine ruined his comp coz of that shit.

scratched cds and his lg cdrom ... BOOM.

he said that he heard a noise of something explode and small pieces everywhere.. he had to open his case to clean the shit .

damn, anybody of you has good pics or a video of that???

I didn't think cheap clipped pop noise was so dangerous .

ive seen crappy cd players wobling the cdm but at 1x it isnt that danegrous

My old Philips drive was a bit temperamental, one day it jammed with the disc still spinning, wouldn't open the drawer so I stuck a needle into the 'eject' hole for jammed discs. It opened the draw with an angry disc whirling like mad and flew up and out and attacked my finger cutting down to the knuckle bone.
And to top it all of the disc was knackered

The eject hole is designed to be used when the unit is powered off.

But I couldn't power off as I was d/l a very big file at the time,plus stupidity and beer played a factor

But thanks for the lesson Sir





edit: typo's

52x = disc spinning at 150mph = dangerous
let that be a lesson

200 m/s = about 450 mph

why don't they just make cd's and dvd's stronger? like, imbed micro metal wires in them or something. *shrug*

..imagine when 200x drives will be available, all the shards of metal flying faster than rifle bullets out of the drive

I read somewhere that the maximum speed is almost reached, because centrifugal forces become uncontrollable at some point.