ok this may sound silly

But is there any special cd r/w disks I should buy for cd r/w drive. It says the drive is an 48x24x48x max speed (hp pavillion) . The last ones I bought were 4x and some 12 x ones in another package does it matter what speed I use?

No, it'll work just fine. Just try to match or put the burning speed lower in the program you use to burn your discs.

the speed on the disks is just what thier made to handle...if you burn a 12x disk in a 52x burner, the disk will prolly shatter

In fact its not possible. (ok its possible but few people know how to get around the burncode limitations). As for physically shattering ... the rating of the disc doesnt have anything to do with physical integrity but rather data integrity