Preservation of correspondence

[Billy Pettit]

arcarlini at iee.org wrote:
> It is rare that they fail completely (they usually slowly develop
> errors over time in heavy use until you have to replace them).  But
> let me tell you, if you get the one rare one that does fail, it fails
>   SPECTACULARLY. As in, it takes the drive with it!

I've had one CD-R shatter and the drive was indeed unusable after that.
I tried to repair it, but after an hour of clearing bits out and putting
the thing back together, testing, dismantling, rinse, lather, repeat
I decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I still have it in case I
magically
run out of CD drives in some far distant future ...

Antonio

-------------------------------------------------------

One of the last projects we did at Philips US, was a study to see how fast
we could spin the disk before it shattered.  A friend of mine, a mechanical
engineer, did the testing.  He had a blast.  It was like a mini version of
Mythbusters.  Even had the high speed television camera.

To accelerate the process he would often nick or chip the edge of the inner
hole.  When they split - literally - it was right through the front door of
the drive.  He finally got his own lab so the rest of us would feel safer.
But what a fun job he had!  He loved his work.

Billy