Is it possible to have a CD-rom drive in your computer that spins so fast that the disk shatters?

Answer 1

No way, even if there were 100X or 200X drives, the centrifugal force on the CD itself would not be great enough to cause the disc to shatter. Perhaps if the disc is already damaged previously in some way, a bad chip/scratch or wrinkled label might be enough to throw the disc off balance inside the drive which (when spinning at 52X perhaps) could cause some serious damage. But on a normal disc the speed alone will not shatter it, not even if it was spinning for days and days.

Answer 2

Anything is possible - your question might better be asked, "Is is PROBABLE ....."

And the answer is no, unless your computer is in some exceptionally unusual conditions. I wrote this reply about hard drives, but then realized it was about CDs. The answer is basically the same. Of course, if you put a cracked CD into a drive, then you can wreck them both. There is a fine layer of liquid inside most CDs that if it escapes will surely cause trouble. But generally, nope. Read on, even if the rest of the answer was crafted around hard drives.

First, the motors that drive the disk have a practical speed limit. Electrical motors theoretically can spin as fast as the power supply allows, but in fact the way the motors are made and operated imposes a limit on their speed. And the makers of the motors themselves design them so that they do not "run away" - control of the motor speeds is very important.

Then there is the matter of the disk. What would it take to make a disk "shatter"? What do you MEAN by "shatter"?

Let's take the last point first - "shatter" generally means to break into lots of small pieces as a result of some physical event, usually impact, but perhaps (although very rarely) from the effect of sound waves. If you drop, or stroke, an object, perhaps it will shatter. Generally, the object must be relatively brittle, or the physical events involved in the impact enough to make a non-brittle object fracture suddenly into many pieces. Interestingly, often glass does not shatter when struck by a bullet - the glass may fracture, or crack, and a hole could be driven through the glass.

Computer hard drives are not made of materials that easily shatter. Instead, the imact of an object striking them is absorbed and spread through the maerial. Spinning at an extreme rate of speed might destroy the motor, or some of the parts of the computer drive from heat caused by friction. The forces applied in a high rate of spinning would usually not recreate the kinds of forces from an impact that cause something to shatter.

However, under the most extreme conditions, it might be possible to generate rapid vibrations passing through the hard drive disk and thereby cause it to break in a way some would call "shattering." But if that happened, the hard drive itself would need to also be subjected to some extreme condition such as exceptional cold, that made its material components more brittle and susceptible to such breakage.

Since that kind of cold would probably also freeze the motor, it is very unlikely the hard drive could be made to operate in that manner.

As an experiement, someone might be able to cause this to happen. It is unlikely that even those fellows on "Mythbusters" could create such conditions successfully.

So the final answer is, don't worry about this, you won't ever see it take place.

Answer 3

Yes, that is possible but I would suggest having an extra CD-rom put back because it sounds like your CD-rom might be ready to crash or your drive screws have not been tightened when it was installed. You might want to have a professional IT person to look at it, but do not let them charge you alot to fix it as this is only a minor problem.

Answer 4

i dont know about shatters but get really really hot until it damaged the cd and the cd rom ,yes. i had an old cdrom some years ago , and i was using on cd for days in the cdrom and it destroyed it cause of the heating

Answer 5

yes, I have seen it happen, it is rare, there could be a small crack in the disk, or imperfection that makes it off balance, and come cdroms spin fast enough, I have only seen it twice, but it freaks you out, like it explodes or something

Answer 6

no,but the disk can shatter for other reason like an imperfection in the disk

Answer 7

yes

Answer 8

no they would not make them for purposes like that!

Answer 9

no way, unless you made one yourself

Answer 10

....Mythbusters!

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/episode/episode_11.html