Foo - exploding cd

ever seen the myth busters episode where they test the myth of cd's shattering in the drive?
it happened to me. it was nuts, it sounded like someone came up and kicked my tower, it was loud. it was not a cdr, but an actual album. it shattered into a million plastic shards. had to take it out to get it all out, just a few big shards. crazy, never thought it would happen to me. but all is good now, sort of, now for some reason it closes after like 3 seconds of being opened, so thats annoying. brand new computer too.

I've seen this happen on the latest high-speed CD-drives. If you damage the centre-hole in the slightest bit, the high-RPMs will elongate the cracks from the centre outwards and tear the CD to shreads. This happened to a DVD I had. I let someone borrow it and they yanked it out by the outer-edges instead of pushing the button in the centre of the case. This caused some minor cracks in the edges of the hole in the middle. It played fine on the standalone DVD-player by the TV, probably because that only runs at 1x. But when I put it into my computer's DVD drive and tried to rip it at max-speed, that was too much for the already-damaged disc and it just shredded itself. :(

Happened to me a few years ago. My bro and I were playing a computer game or something that had been sitting in his truck in the cold for a few hours. Put the CD in, started it up, and a few seconds later it just exploded. The tray thing flew out and pieces of the CD flew all over the room like shrapnel. Luckily no one was injured.

Here's a tip. Don't try to bend one until it breaks. :( Ouchies. :(

Never had one shred, but I did have a disk get lost (whole) inside of a drive. Put disk in, ran it, didn't read, popped tray out... empty tray. Had to take the thing apart to retreive the disk (It was my Windows 98 SE disk, back in the day)

Here's a tip. Don't try to bend one until it breaks. :( Ouchies. :(

Pssssht. I've done this lots of times. Just be careful, and close your eyes.

Astute technophiles will notice that CD-Roms progressed fairly steadily from 1X read speeds back in the 80's up to 52X read speeds in the late 90's. They haven't sped up any since then.

Click (http://www.powerlabs.org/cdexplode.htm) for a lesson in mechanics of materials (yes there are video and other visual learning aids).

I put old scratched CDs on the dremel tool, spun them up to a good 15000 rpm and pushed them off and watched them take off down the street. Then I did it without the heavy leather glove on and it exploded on my hand. Stupid stupid stupid

The episode where they microwave a CD is good too. I tried it on an AOL freebie. Nice spark show for the first 2-3 seconds. After that it becomes a smelly mess.

The episode where they microwave a CD is good too. I tried it on an AOL freebie. Nice spark show for the first 2-3 seconds. After that it becomes a smelly mess.

Boring. Do it yourself, or better yet, make plasma in the microwave with grapes. THAT is WAY cool.

Well, you shouldn't be ripping DVDs to your hard drive. It's illegal.Not if I own the DVD....

Technically, I think there have been rulings based on the digital millennium copyright act that it is illegal if you override any form of digital rights management or other protective measures in the process, but screw them. I paid for a license to use the media as I see fit for my own personal use and the license further entitles me to backup copies. Prosecuting the innocent isn't going to stop the criminals.