A CD-Rom we borrowed from the library a few weeks ago exploded in the drive of the kids’s computer. Shattered into tiny pieces.
We took it back to the library who have decided that we are financially responsible for it as it is ‘obvious’ we did something as their IT dept feels it is not possible for a CD-Rom to simply explode like that.
I asked the librarian if she really thought I had used it for target practice
What I want to know is was the fault likely to have been in the drive or in the CD-Rom? I’ve replaced the drive as I’m cautious like that but I’m feeling annoyed at paying for the CD-Rom if it’s likely it was the CD-Rom at fault. The librarian said she’d negotiate with me if I could bring her any info which shows it was the CD-Rom which may have been at fault but otherwise I have to pay the $30.
52x I presume? It probably looked like one of these.
I haven’t had a disc break on me personally, but my friend did end up being pissed off that Blizzard wanted 20$ or something to replace the Diablo 2 disc that split in his drive.
It’s hard to say where the problem was. If the disc contains a slight flaw, or the drive is slightly unbalanced, then spinning that sucker up to the speeds modern CD drives can reach is always risky. My brother has a CD writer where you have to hold the button down for it to max out the rpms.
So actually, I can’t really answer your question, other than to say their IT people are dumbasses. For “proof”, you might want to print one of the many hits Google gives for “cd shatter”. Good luck!
Their IT department is wrong. It’s uncommon, but quite possible in modern high speed CD-ROM readers, especially there was an existing otherwise un-noticeable small crack or defect in the disk that would have propagated when the disk was subjected to high torque at spin up. Off balance CDs that would work OK in slower readers are also prone to this. CD media designers never imagined how fast modern CD readers would be going and damaged media (even if only slightly damaged) is failing a lot more these days than it used to when used in high speed CDROM drives.
In a high speed drive, if the disk had even a small defect the sticker (esp if it was near the edge) could have contributed to a slightly off balance condition that would have caused additional stress on the media.
After using CDs for years we had one explode in a drive a couple of months ago. It was some old HP printer driver disk. I’d never heard of such a thing happening.
I retrieved all the fragments and reassembled it on a layer of duct tape. It resembled a pane of glass which had been struck by a bullet, with all the cracks radiating out from a defect on the edge of the central hole.
I had a cd shattering experience two days ago.I was working on my friends machine and had to use a particular cd.I did notice a small 1mm length crack on the inside portion of the disc.I would like to emphasise that the crack was not on the area where data is stored,but on the transperant plastic ring which has the hole.
I decided to use the cd nonetheless and in 30 seconds I heard a muffled bullet shot sound and could literally hear the cd turn into shrapnels.
The drive works perfectly fine after it was opened up and thouroughly cleaned.There were virtually a million pieces in there!
The Mangetout Armchair consultancy agrees; not only could it have imbalanced the CD, but there is a small possibility that the adhesive could have affected the structural properties of the plastic underneath it, PLUS it represents a small area of extra lamination, so the disc wouldn’t have deformed evenly as the rotation speed increased.
Wait till the legal eagles get their hands on this one. Sue the drive manufacturer and the disc producers. The first makes a drive too fast for the media, and the disc producer sells discs that can’t stand the gaff!
Yep, CD-ROM’s do occasionally shatter in the drive - had that happen to my Brood Wars disk. Fortuanatly, I just burned a copy from a friend to replace it.
Fortuanatly, I just burned a copy from a friend to replace it. 