Re: Exploding CD

[Pete Shew <pslists@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for all the responses, it seems I am not alone, nor am I the
subject of an attack (paranoid, me?). It was a most impressive bang, but
no bits escaped at high speed. The CD in question was Memorex (I am told
- it's difficult to tell now). It's just a shame it took the drive with it.

Pete

Paul Gale wrote:
> Yes - company I used to work for did a lot of work investigating this
- some drives at the time (major brands) had a fairly flimsy cover on the
tray mechanism that could allow an exploding CD to eject sharp shard at
several hundred miles per hour!!! We did some ultra high speed filming of
them failing - very impressive!
>
> All caused by brittle plastics used in the CD's - all that was needed
is a slight crack in the centre hub and wind the drive up to approx 40x -
50x speed and big bang :)
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
>> Pete
>> Sent: 15 May 2007 12:49
>> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>> Subject: [ukha_d] Exploding CD
>>
>> Has anyone had a CD explode in a drive? I couldn't play this audio
CD-R
>> under WinXP for some reason although I could see the cda file, so
I
>> tried in my Ubuntu server. No joy but a lot of whirring noise.
Following
>> an attempt to eject it after about half a minute and there was a
very
>> load bang.
>>
>> I stripped down the DVD writer and emptied all the bits of plastic
and
>> most of the shards of silver coloured foil that were all over the
>> inside. Even the Dyson wouldn't pull them all out. It looks like
the
>> explosion damaged the edge of  the ribbon cable to the read head
though,
>> as the reassembled drive won't recognise media now :-)
>>
>> Now landfill, but is this a first or have others experienced
similar
>> things?
>>
>>