DVD exploding inside the drive from a drive exceeding 24x. True?

[snafubaby]

I was on Yahoo answers, and this person asked which dvd drive is the fastest on the market. Someone replied that 24x is the fastest speed possible for a dvd drive. He said going any faster would cause the dvd to explode inside the unit. I don't think that's an intelligent answer, as the drive's motor is not the thing that would increase in speed. Just the drive's mechanics would go faster. The laser aperature would be zipping across the disc faster than a slower speed drive. I don't think that it would cause a disc to explode inside the unit, as the laser never actually TOUCHES The disc. It just floats millimeters above it. If the laser touched the disc, eventually you would have scratches galore.

Can someone clear this up for me, and maybe you could tell me which drive is the fastest on the market, and are there any drives in the planning stages that would go 50x, or 100x. Thanks!

[deadrats]

I was on Yahoo answers, and this person asked which dvd drive is the fastest on the market. Someone replied that 24x is the fastest speed possible for a dvd drive. He said going any faster would cause the dvd to explode inside the unit. I don't think that's an intelligent answer, as the drive's motor is not the thing that would increase in speed. Just the drive's mechanics would go faster. The laser aperature would be zipping across the disc faster than a slower speed drive. I don't think that it would cause a disc to explode inside the unit, as the laser never actually TOUCHES The disc. It just floats millimeters above it. If the laser touched the disc, eventually you would have scratches galore.

Can someone clear this up for me, and maybe you could tell me which drive is the fastest on the market, and are there any drives in the planning stages that would go 50x, or 100x. Thanks!

this belief is something that's been around for years and there is a grain of truth to it, as a disk spins faster the force exerted on it increases (force equals mass times acceleration and acceleration is a change in velocity over time, a change in direction or both), since there is always the chance that a disk will have a minor stress fracture from the manufacturing process (there's no such thing as a manufacturing process that has a 0 percent fault rate), putting such a disk in a drive spinning at 100x could conceivably cause it to "explode".

furthermore, the spinning motion cause heat to build up, heat that is added to to that generated by the laser, it's not outside the realm of possibility that even a non-defective disk subjected to burning of data at 100x speeds may malfunction and splinter.

[AlanHK]

Anyone can write anything in Yahoo Answers, and then it gets rated by someone equally clueless. Often when searching a link to them comes up and I read the "highly rated" answer, and it's complete bullshit.

Anyway, my DVD player can fast-forward at 48X, and no explosions yet.

[sum_guy]

A few years back, I had just installed a Plextor CD-R burner, went out and bought some blanks, I exploded two disks, I don't know how fast they were spinning but the drive sounded like a jet engine on viagra. The last one to explode ruined the drive. I have no idea the cause, but had to replace the drive and I've never exploded one since.

[jagabo]

Anyway, my DVD player can fast-forward at 48X, and no explosions yet.

It doesn't fast forward by spinning the disc at 48x, it moves the head like you would a turntable arm.

I do remember seeing some videos where someone spun CDs faster and faster to see at what point they shattered. I seem to recall it wasn't too much faster than the equivalent of 24x DVD.

It's not the video I saw many years ago, but a quick search on Youtube turned up this Mythbusters clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6avp29GqXo

A 24x DVD probably maxes out around 14,000 rpm. About half what it took for Mythbusters to shatter CDs. Their high speed cameras showed the discs warping severely well before they shattered though. That would make them unreadable.

[Bjs]

Back in the mid 90's some boffins unlocked the drives mechanism to test the theory ... the disc and drive were toast due to vibrations experienced at speeds greater than 52x ... mythbusters came second.

[lordsmurf]

I still fondly recall a 1x DVD-R shooting out of a Pioneer 103 drive (16x read), slamming into a closet door on the other side of the room, and cracking severely. It missed my face by mere portions of an inch -- I could feel the air displaced by the disc on my nose and eyes.

I've seen a CD-R snap in two inside a drive.

It's about disc quality --- not speed.

Yahoo Answers is mostly spammers, children/teens and idiots from what I've seen.

[RabidDog]

DVd's have been known to shatter, could be called exploding? and then the pieces do come flying out the drive at great rate of knots. FFx 48 doesn't speed the disc to 48x speed, probably about a third of that 16x. but 52x is reckoned to be max speed for reading CDr's less for reading DVD's.

[jagabo]

but 52x is reckoned to be max speed for reading CDr's less for reading DVD's.

Note that 1x for DVD (632 to 1623 RPM) is about 3 times more than 1x (200 to 500 RPM) for a CD. So a 20x DVD is spinning faster than a 52x CD.

[nic2k4]

I've repaired a creative 52x drive that had a CD explode inside, once. From the pieces that were left and the kids other discs, I concluded that the problem was caused by his abusing the discs when removing them from their case. Some people tend to bend the discs when taking them out, that causes small cracks to appear around the spindle hole. When a disc spinning at 52x starts to flutter the cracks can spread and multiply until one reaches the outer edge, then the disc explodes. DVDs are more resistant since they're made of 2 acrylic discs bonded together, but they get a different problem from bending. You see it with second hand discs from rental stores; bending causes the discs to partially separate and leads to playback issues.

[classfour]

Seen it - if you're around discs, you will.

That darn polycarbonate isn't indestructible.

And - it doesn't take 24X to do it - I've seen it on an old 2X drive - it's up to the disc.