Just had a CD shatter

Just had a CD shatter in the drive

As the title suggests. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Was trying to listen to a CD with iTunes and it weren't playing. Of course iTunes freezes up, so I quit it. But the CD keeps spinning up and then slowing down. I re-open iTunes and there's this terrible racket which can only mean one thing. There are shards everywhere. I guess I can be happy that the drive was shielded enough to keep plastic from flying out, since my case is both open and sitting right next to my leg, but I'm furious.

A) Manufacturers knew the physical limitations of optical drives and even talked about not being able to make a drive any faster due to the possibility of a shattered disk and needing to beef up the case should it happen. Thus they should have stopped speeding them up when it became a problem. Who on earth needs to listen to a CD at 40X? It'll play at 1X, will it not? MAN!

B) They make 52X drives and mine's only 40X. I don't know what the difference is in RPM, but mine has to be a lot slower. This shouldn't have happened ANYWAY, but certainly not in a high-end V6 of CD-ROMS.

C) I understand that it's the fault of the media, particularly the stupid labels and stuff on the top that make them impossible to balance, let alone spin smoothly at God knows how many RPM! Why can't they just stop painting the disk? I know what I'm listening to: I got it out of it's case with the express purpose to listen to it. Unless I'm completely stupid or ridiculously obsessive compulsive, I don't need reassurance that I've in fact got the CD I want in my hand!

D) What should I do? Is the drive still operable? I tend to think it's probably not. Will LiteOn fix it or replace it? I hardly think it's my own fault. I really don't want to clean this out. I really doubt how well compressed air will work to get shards of plastic and paint out of an enclosed space.

BAH!

What a day

Z

I would just try opening up the drive and picking/cleaning out all the pieces I could find, then give it a good blast of compressed air, inspect the laser assembly and such, and the ribbon cables for any visible damage, if there isn't any, put it all back together and see if its working....if not...oh well.....CD-RW's have to be the cheapest hardware ever....I just got a 52x LiteOn burner a while ago for like $31 new....haven't blown up a cd yet though.......

When I play CD's in either my 40x/16x pioneer slot loader, or the above mentioned super fast liteon, they never really rev up to just play a cd, maybe briefly, but never to their full potential speed....I'm guessing 52-56x range is over 6,000rpm.......which is reeealy pushing it for a mass produced plastic disc to be rotating at. I just hope my slot drive never blows up a cd....I'd get a shard right in my leg.....

I've never had ANY CD spin up as fast as that one did, and it only did it momentarily. Just playing a CD, it should have spun up and then shut up.

My problem is not the cost; it's the principle. I didn't cause this to happen and I shouldn't have to pay to fix it if it's broken. I can't call the record label and ask for a new drive, and I highly doubt LiteOn's going to claim responsibility for it, though the CD never should have spun up that fast . . . And if I DO replace it, I'm going with a DVD burner . . . they're cheap too.

Z

I bet it spun up that fast because it was having trouble reading the disc or something, it has happened with a 56x on a different pc I've used.....I know what you mean, I'd be mad too if my drive had that happen, did the drive survive? I was going to get a DVD burner too....but my system is kinda....yeah....(see sig lol)....so it wasn't worth it. I wonder if someone could win a lawsuit filed over getting injured by a disc shard wounding them.......that'd be interesting......maybe it'd make the manufacturers think twice about limiting how fast those drives rev up too....

I've had this happen as well. The media was not up to specifications and you should be furious with the CD media manufacturers; not LiteON. What brand of CD were you using?

Also, there are freeware utilities that will limit the speed of your CD-ROM reading during specific operations, ie. audio CD playback. I -think- Nero comes with one, and I know for sure Asus has one for download.

Good idea with the DVD burner... I'd sure like a fast one. Pricewatch was selling some toshiba 8x for $55.00 USD. Deals go fast, but they're always worth a shot;

www.pricewatch.com

-Lite

Are there any programs to make the cd spin as fast as possible? I want to shatter a disc to hear it and see the outcome!

sounds like an episode of Myth Busters when they tested this very theory. Needless to say, none of the cd players could spin a cd fast enough to make it shatter. They hooked a high speed drill bit up to one, and that made it to shatter to peices. Im going to have to say it was a faulty cd rather than cd player.

Well I've cleaned it out . . . lots of little shards. Somehow, I feel like I left a really big chunk in there, but I didn't see one . . . I've yet to put it back in the rig, though . . . Little scared it won't be good. Nothing looked damaged, except for some foam that got ripped up and a few scratches to the paint on the inside. Not under warranty now, but what self respecting overclocker wouldn't try to fix something like that themselves? Besides, to get it fixed, I'd spend more on shipping than if I just got a new one. I guess we'll see. I've just reinstalled Windows, so I need to finalize my hardware configuration and register Windows. Shattered CD ruined my new hard drive day.

Z