CD Exploading.

What I was referring to there was the drastic change in temperature going from warm(room temp) to ice cold(outside) back to room temps again repeatedly. That stresses the actual material in the disk itself.

The microwave video there shows the reflection and refraction of the micro waves off of the disk while looking somewhat conductive electrically. I don't think you would want to make a habit of that however.

The fasted optical drives seen over the years were the 56X models made by only a few brands like Artec(cheapo crappo). When those first came out I tried one by that brand to see the drive itself fly apart inside! Cheap!!! crap

so instead of the cd exploding we really need to worry about the cd drives! lol

The Artec brand was simply tried out then due to 56x speed over the typical 52x seen on cd roms and 52x24x52 later 52x32x52 cd writers to see what difference would be seen with the faster read time. The drive crapped out in just about a day or so. That brand isn't even seen in the same retail stores that originally sold them like Staples or CompUSA!

Bad clamping mechanisms will do that. The CD actually doesn't spin properly. The only other time they do that is if there's little defects which eventually get worse until the disk shatters. That's all. It's not exactly common, but yeah, it's most definitely possible.

That's why they can't reproduce it in the mythbusters episodes.

By the way, the reason that they get shredded (and it's *only* due to either faulty clamping mechanisms or faults in the disk itself) is because of the centrifugal force. The thing spins so fast that any defect in the drive or disk will shatter it in the right conditions.

No I know what you meant, but you mentioned microwaves so it made me think of it. In my dorm we'd take blank cd's and do it. It starts to smell after about 3 though... it's awesome though.

The best way to really illustrate what most likely happened to the disk drunkbum222 was talking about there was to see what happened when cold then weather repeats itself and you see a water main break from the expansion and contraction. The disk being carried around exposed to rapid temp changes became fragile when stresses developed in the disk's material. Once the lens in the drive heated the disk... kapuuu eeee...

Haha. The "heat" from a laser will have absolutely no impact. The disk spins too fast for that to be a factor. Microwaves and lasers are two completely different things.

Optical disks are read by reflection of the light on the disk at a high rate of speed. The reflection off of the disk is then read and converted into data bits loaded into tam. Microwave ovens use radio waves there.

The problem seen with the disk flying apart was seen while spinning fast and having stress fractures in the material itself from "exposure to the elements" in that sense. That's where temperature changes were the one thing you didn't want to see with the software disk effected. With prices seeing from $20 up as high as $70-$80 for games you want to protect the disks themselves.

hehe. Temp changes don't do it either. My disks stand testament to that, as they're going through drastic temperature changes daily, even hourly the last week. As I carry inventory with me all the time, some disks even endure sub zero temperatures for days upon days at a time, just to be taken into the site, thrown into the drive and away you go.

Defects can be either manufacturing defects or a bad clamping mechanism. That's all. Radio waves, light, little aliens, the CD gnomes, the gremlins, the weather fairies and toaster ovens really don't have anything to do with it.