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All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: Calum on 17 July 2002, 15:29

Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: Calum on 17 July 2002, 15:29: quote:
MORE EXPLODING CD ROM's

Nick Stroud received a mail from Paul Shackleton a Senior IT Technician from Milton Keynes Council who had an incident with an exploding CD ROM.

"We had a disk explode earlier today, and eject a sizeable chunk across the office, ricocheting off a pc on a desk, and impacting an office dividing partition. To say we were startled is a slight understatement! It made "one helluva bang"!!

The server concerned is one of my "spare" boxes... It is a DELL Poweredge 1300, and the drive that had the cd in is a SAMSUNG CD-Master 48E, model SC-148. The disc that disintegrated was a MICROSOFT NT4.0 cd-rom!

Please be vigilant and check ALL CD media before use.

This is the actual drive and disk.
Is it a coincidence that this was a Microsoft disk? POSSIBLY!!!

Link to first image (http://www.boomspeed.com/calumw1l/explodingCDs.jpg)

Link to second image (http://www.boomspeed.com/calumw1l/crackedwindowsCD.jpg)

Link to original source article (http://www.procure.ed.ac.uk/computer/ordering/new.htm).

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: KernelPanic on 17 July 2002, 19:01: Is Dell finally taking counter measures against Micro$hite?

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Tux ]
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: DC on 24 July 2002, 06:35: Nah, CD's are just shitty pieces of plastic. They explode (literally, and with a lot of force) at around 27000 RPM. Or less. Whole ones, that is. Whole ones that spin in a correct, perfectly aligned way. They do this in a nice and violent way.
Cracked CD's have way different stress levels and crack (further) more easily. That, and CD-drives aren't *that* well aligned. And they get warm in there - adds to the problem.
Modern CD-rom-players get up to (calculates) 13kRPM or so, which should be more than enough to shatter your ordinary cracked CD after a while.

Source: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/22/0311248&mode=thread&tid=126 (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/22/0311248&mode=thread&tid=126) (Slashdot).
Actually, http://www.qedata.se/e_js_n-cdrom.htm (http://www.qedata.se/e_js_n-cdrom.htm) is the true source, but it is currently slshdotted (poor things).
Yahoo catched it: http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:UaTCrUMQitYC:www.qedata.se/e_js_n-cdrom.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 (http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:UaTCrUMQitYC:www.qedata.se/e_js_n-cdrom.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: tratan on 29 July 2002, 23:03: I wonder if those freaky mini-cd's are immune to this sort of thing. I would think so, because there's so much less centrifical force acting on them.

Also, wouldn't a disk with a crack be unreadable? Or is it possible for the disk to be cracked internally, or non-fatally?

Sounds like I should do some experiments with AOL cds (http://smile.gif)
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: DC on 30 July 2002, 04:07: quote:
Originally posted by tratan:
I wonder if those freaky mini-cd's are immune to this sort of thing. I would think so, because there's so much less centrifical force acting on them.

Not immune, but they can achieve higher speeds (because of the reason you gave).

quote:

Also, wouldn't a disk with a crack be unreadable? Or is it possible for the disk to be cracked internally, or non-fatally?

Well, I did have a CD (audio) once that had a +/1 1 cm crack from the edge inwards (completely from top to bottom). It ran the first 10 or so songs correctly (it didn't go too well, but you could listen to it. And write it to HD).
So it's not unreadable - just the cracket part is.

quote:

Sounds like I should do some experiments with AOL cds (http://smile.gif)

You have my blessings ;)
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: imthesponge on 7 August 2002, 10:53: http://hamjudo.com/notes/cdrom.html (http://hamjudo.com/notes/cdrom.html)
I haven't tried this yet.. gonna use my friend's microwave
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: jtpenrod on 9 August 2002, 08:00: quote:
I haven't tried this yet. gonna use my friend's microwave
OK, well I know what to do with those AOHell CDs that wind up in the mail. :D
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Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: Kintaro on 9 August 2002, 12:16: Exploding CD's... If one had a crack in it that defected it i could imageine, I will get a motor and gear it to 50krpm and see what happens in my new lab!
Title: Cracked Windows CDs
Post by: heylee on 28 August 2002, 21:17: I use my AOL disks as coasters so my desk doesn't get messed up ;) (http://tongue.gif)