cd literally exploded inside drive

rblampain · 09-14-2005, 08:12 AM

I was installing FC2 on a new machine when disk number 2 exploded inside the cd drive. It sounded like a small calibre firearm had discharged. I found hundreds of small pieces of the cd inside the drive. This cd drive was vibrating more than other cdrom drives but that's not really the point.

Has anyone had this experience? Is there something to learn from this? Faulty media, poorly made drive or both? The drive is (was) an Asus drive and the cd comes from a vendor of distros on cds.

rjwilmsi · 09-14-2005, 08:30 AM

Wow, I've never heard of that before. It must have been a faulty CD - I guess that it had a crack in it and exploded due to heating / high rotation speeds while you were installing.

freakyg · 09-14-2005, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rblampain

Has anyone had this experience? Is there something to learn from this? Faulty media, poorly made drive or both? The drive is (was) an Asus drive and the cd comes from a vendor of distros on cds.

I have heard of this.........and the problem was found to be cheap material used to make the CD.........I would email that vendor and tell what happened......If they won't replace the disk then we should start a boycott .........

styrmis · 09-14-2005, 11:22 AM

Yeah, this does happen from time to time (not witnessed it myself though).

A number of years ago RM recalled hundreds of computers after it became known that this could happen.

You were lucky though, other accounts tell of shrapnel being blasted out the front!

ilikejam · 09-14-2005, 10:26 PM

Ahem.

http://www.powerlabs.org/cdexplode.htm
especially
http://www.powerlabs.org/movies/cd.mpg

Dave

rblampain · 09-14-2005, 11:17 PM

Thank you all, especially ilikejam, there is something to be learned after all. It seems the morality is to try not to go over a speed of 48X. In my case the cd drive should not be able to go faster since it was a distro install and there was yet no way of controlling the speed through software like some cd writer software allow. It looks like distros should be designed to limit the speed to 48X for the install.

rblampain · 09-16-2005, 09:45 AM

I read in a link provided by ilikejam that after having a cd explosion, the 'victim' found the drive still working after giving it a good clean up, so I did the same and found mine is still working too.

reddazz · 09-16-2005, 10:50 AM

I had a similar experience a few years ago. I was installing win98 on a clients computer using a brand new windows oem disc and it just shattered into pieces after a sound that was like a small explosion. I had to replace the cdrom drive but luckily I always make copies of any software I install on my customers' computers, so didn't need to get a new win98 disc.