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CD exploded in the drive?!? How?

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by downrighttired 1 view

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OK so this is a first for me. Got a call from our receptionist this morning saying that a cd a exploded in her cd drive.

Apparently she put the cd in the drive and walked into the next room. She said she heard a really loud crash. She actually thought one of the plants in her office had fallen off the file cabinet it was so loud. When she opened the cd drive pieces of the cd fell out.

Now ive broken many a cd in frustration and those things arent that easy to break, and they usually dont shatter like that, just crack.

Anyone heard of this, any ideas why it would happen? has me really curious....

24 replies

by mjd420nova

I've seen this once before, the CD that was inserted was cracked but the user put it in anyway, hoping it would still work. Apparently they didn't set it properly and it jammed the mechanism. The drive then tried to eject the drawer and it hooked the edge and broke the CD into five pieces.

by ic-it

It must have been placed in correctly (or at least nearly so) because it blew the door of the CD-ROM and shattered the CD into thousands of pieces.
I wish I had seen it, but I only got to see the results.

by downrighttired

blew the door off? ahh yeh that would have been cool to see.
Ill get to clean all the shards out once everyone goes home..... luck me

it was one of those thin computer cases that can either lay flat or stand up. kinda like a PS3. Hers is standing up so the cd drive is vertical, i guess the cd probably just wasnt seated in there right. still amazes me that it would shatter like that into a thousand pieces when ive used cds as frisbees plenty of times....

by cg it

they tried that and busted the myth...

they had to put the CD on a drill spin it at max before it flew apart. Over 100 times the speed a CD drive spins the CD.

by seanferd

and that kind of centripetal acceleration is hard to reproduce by hand. Destruction of the CD would require some damage or defect in the disk, although it might not be visible.

I have seen the results of this, and wished I'd been there to see it. Behind some Lexan.

by cabarnacus

Dunno if this is true or not but i heard that the reason drives only read or write to 52x max is because during tests at faster speeds disks have been known to warp and shatter.

Maybe a cheap disk not rated to 52x was used or a defective disk that may have slipped past quality control.

by overpaid01

WARPING!!! I think you nailed it. The disk is the old rick game from hasbro originally made for win98. I bought it for 1 dollar in the re-release section of best buy. Bragged on the original manual that it is rated for 4x or higher speed. I am going with the idea that the laser imprint might have been too compacted to read the game animations on the disk.

by Former member

Aluminum is an explosive. CD's use aluminum. Possibility exists that the CD was defective with the Al not properly doped and when exposed to the heat of a class 4 laser did the boom.

by downrighttired

interesting theory, I like it much better than spinning too fast!! lol

by jardinier

On one occasion I placed a CD in the drive, correctly seated I am quite sure. Then something very strange happened. The rate of spin of the CD increased significantly and noisily until it flew out of the drive and across the room. The CD was still fully functional, but the flap on the DC drive never fully recovered.

by rob miners

be in the right spot at the right time.
I also feel that it has to be the inferior quality of the CD. I have also never tried to run a CD in a Drive that wasn't horizontal. Maybe something to do with gravitational pull. Or is it the fact that I just don't trust them? I don't put Lables on them either.
We didn't have these problems with Floppies.
I must be getting to be an old fart.
Rob

by jardinier

I purchased some time ago a brand new IBM desktop computer which came with a stand so that it could be mounted on its side.

There is no way that I will ever mount it on its side and insert a CD.

by downrighttired

yeah, my boss put together a bunch of these Asus barebones boxes that are the same way, they have a stand to stand em upright. I think im the only one in the office that has theres sitting on the desk w/ the monitor on top.

by computercookie

CD-ROM's the were capable of achieving 60X transfer rates and found that most CD's disintegrate at above 52X, in saying this they also found no 52X CD-ROM's actually achieved this rate.

You have to realize that CD's operate in an enclosed and hot environment this is why testing using grinders and drill's is pointless!

Faulty CD's would also be likely to fail at any RPM, cheap CD's will also be liable to disintergrate.

by overpaid01

CD was put in correctly, it was six months old, (game cd for the PC). Used it to load the game at home, (PC was 3 months old). Your receptionst is right, keep the CPU on the floor where it is nice and cool and it made a LOUD bang.

by overpaid01

Just to elaborate, i have never heard of this and i am thankful my wife wasn't home, i have been working around PC's since late 80's and am quite experienced. Disk WAS definately inserted properly, loaded game played it for a few minutes, no warnings or nothing, shattered no piece bigger than 1/4 inch

by pcrx_greg

I have seen this happen twice, I had to replace a CD-ROM for a client who had a disk explode in the drive. When I examined her other CDs, I notice that they had micro cracks around the hole where the center spindle catches the disk. I told her to discontinue using these disks and get replacements. A week later I was called out to the same client to replace the drive again. When I examined the frragments of the exploded disk, it was one of the ones that I had told her to replace. Stress fractures from repeatedly inserting the disk onto the spindle caused the disk to explode under the accelearation of the spin-up.

by alpha_dog

If the disk is weakened in some way, the rotational force creates a point where the disk begins to elongate. As it does so, more weight is shifted to the outside of the the disk, increasing the force on the weak spot.

This elongation does not necessarily happen in line with the plane of the disk. When it's off center (to the top or bottom of the disk) the disk will arch in the opposite direction. This causes even more stresses on the weak area.

The end result is that the CD will either shatter on it's own, or it will strike part of the internal mechanism of the drive as it flexes, which judging by the sound you described, is what happened.

Now for the bad news... Even if the drive seems fine, be ready to replace it if it begins to have trouble reading disks or writes coasters. The shock could have knocked out the alignment.

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