Disk Shattered

[Joshua May]

I was just shutting down my other computer when I heard a loud POP and a wisp of smoke came out of the front of the computer. I waited a few minutes to make sure there wasn't any kind of fire or something in there, and then I turned my computer back on and attempted to open the D: drive, where the "explosion" seemed to come from, but it took some two or three tries for it to open. And, much to my suprise, a CD, which I had not been using or accessing at all when the comp was on, was shattered. About a third of the CD was actually in the tray, and the other 2/3 appear to still be in mostly small fragments within the drive. I'll see what my dad says when he gets home, but I was wondering if anyone here knows why or how this might have happened and what is the best way to fix it.

[Jay H 237]

I've never heard of this, except for a CD in a microwave.....don't ask.

My guesses would be a badly scratched CD that could cause this (think of scouring tile or glass before you cut it, same principle), the drive heated up from lack of ventilation, a failure of the laser, or a defective CD. It could also be any combination of these.

[Joshua May]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

I've never heard of this, except for a CD in a microwave.....don't ask.

My guesses would be a badly scratched CD that could cause this (think of scouring tile or glass before you cut it, same principle), the drive heated up from lack of ventilation, a failure of the laser, or a defective CD. It could also be any combination of these.

The CD was somewhat scratched, but I've had this CD for almost a year now and it obviously hadn't blown up before, so I don't think it's that it's defective. It could be that it is (or was) from the scratching, but I'm lead to believe that it's something from a moving part in the drive, perhaps the laser or something.

[Matt Attallah]

Does the drive still work?

For some reasion (in my CD player) if it can't read it - it spins it as fast as it can. I've had my DVD-Rom reader (on my computer) do this also (not while accessing it - but it still trys to read what's on it from time to time to keep the info 'fresh') but not to this point of shattering the disk.

How old is your computer? CD-Roms are like 50 bucks and CD-RWs are like 75 for a decent one (Got my 52xwrite, 32xrewrite, 52xread for 50 bucks.)

I'd say that you CD-Rom took a dump on ya and you are going to be looking for a new CD reader...

[Jeff Rodriguez]

You should e-mail the mythbusters about it. They did a segment about CDs shattering in the drive. They concluded that it couldn't happen. I bet they would like to hear about it, and see pictures if you can take any.

If you don't know, Mythbusters is a show on TLC. Two guys, Jaimie and Adam, try to recreate common myths. It's a great show.

[Elgin Clock]

Did anyone see the episode of mythbusters where they tried in vain to spin a cd to it's max rotational speed and shatter it??


It didn't happen in any CD drives that they looked at until they hooked up the CD directly to a Dremel like roto tool.. High rpm's shattered it.

[Matt Attallah]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Did anyone see the episode of mythbusters where they tried in vain to spin a cd to it's max rotational speed and shatter it??


It didn't happen in any CD drives that they looked at until they hooked up the CD directly to a Dremel like roto tool.. High rpm's shattered it.

Yup - saw that. Their conclusion was that the disk shattered because of the flexing it did - not because of any scratches.

That high-speed video they had replaying the waves the CD made before it broke was awsome!

[Kyle Fenton]

This is an extremely rare situation. But I have heard a couple of stories like this one. I think what happened is that for some reasons, either the gears or the motor in the cd-rom drive spun-off and collided with the CD inside the drive. With a CD spinning really fast, it would destroy most of the CD, and shatter all over the drive.

[Andy A.]

CD's do shatter in drives, albiet rarely.

It usally happens the first time the drive spins up a new CD, because the disk has a defect in it that, when its spinning at high speed, causes it to break.

It's rare because quality control on todays disks is pretty good, and yesteryears drive models didn't spin up as high as they do today. Sufice to say, we won't be seeing any CD drives that are much faster then they are today, since spinning the disks much faster results in detonating disks.

Why this disk shattered when it did is beyond me. My guess would be the drive fried at shut down or something. I wouldn't plan on using it again. If you do take it apart, take pictures!

-Andy A.

[NoodleKnight]

Disk's do shatter; Andy's right they need to be defective or severely damaged in some way. It happened before in my older desktop, if the case gets hot enough (around 50-60*C) and you keep the CD in there for a long time (a week or so), and you keep the computer on 24/7, then run the CD at around 52x, then kapow!

As for cleanup, you cant really do anything there; when it happened to me it damaged the disk drive, so I just recycled it and bought a new one. If you were lucky and it didn't scratch the lens/rip apart the internals, then you could try opening the case and use a strong vacuum to clean the fragments. Just don't use compressed air to blow away the bits.

Yep, I saw that mythbusters episode. Microwaving CD-R's can be so fun...

[Joshua May]

I think I'll take out the CD drive today and open it up, my guess is that it is gone because there are so many fragments still in the internals of the drive. I'll be sure to take lots of pics to show. Thanks for all of your help.

[JoeFryman]

That same thing happened to me with my CD-RW drive. The CD was in there for an hour or so. And the case was off. Yes. Ventilation was not a problem for me.

[Adam Y.]

Did anyone see the episode of mythbusters where they tried in vain to spin a cd to it's max rotational speed and shatter it??

The only reason why they used a dremel tool is that their cd-rom drive was not spinning up to the 52x speed. I think they ended up spinning the dremel tool up to an equivalend of 52x speed.

You should e-mail the mythbusters about it. They did a segment about CDs shattering in the drive. They concluded that it couldn't happen. I bet they would like to hear about it, and see pictures if you can take any.

No they didn't conclude it won't happen. They said it does happen but it's highly unlikely.

[NoodleKnight]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

The only reason why they used a dremel tool is that their cd-rom drive was not spinning up to the 52x speed. I think they ended up spinning the dremel tool up to an equivalend of 52x speed.
No they didn't conclude it won't happen. They said it does happen but it's highly unlikely.

They also used the damaged disks; they where the ones that shattered under speeds close to 52x... I think the new ones held together, until they pushed 240 volts through the router.

[Frank(Aflak)]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

I've never heard of this, except for a CD in a microwave.....don't ask.

My guesses would be a badly scratched CD that could cause this (think of scouring tile or glass before you cut it, same principle), the drive heated up from lack of ventilation, a failure of the laser, or a defective CD. It could also be any combination of these.

The CD was flawed, it failed at high speeds. Its more common than you would think.

The CD is, of course, unrecoverable (call the publisher, they will probably send you a new one if you ask nicely).

The drive is toast, too. Good news: maybe you can talk your dad into buying a new dual-layer DVD burner so you can back up all those DVD movies you have laying around (your local blockbuster . . shhhh!).

If the computer turned back on, its probably all OK, but there is a chance you fried the IDE channel or damaged any number of different components with the voltage fluctuations related to a rapidly failing peice of hardware.

Sometimes the drive is recoverable, but the fact that the magic smoke came out of this one leads me to believe that it is dead. Open it, take a shop vac (careful!) to it, needlenose, whatever to get all teh little peices out, it might be fine.