It exploded, literally exploded....

[NittanyLAncer]

I was in my room 2 nights ago....minding my own buisness watching TV when my Buslink CD-RW blew up. I don't mean broke...I mean blew up. The front cover along with much of it's internal workings were ejected out the front all over the floor....and the back portion is a good deal screwed up. The metal casing around it is intact, and thankfully, as a LiveDrive was below it and a DVD above.

It did all this with a very loud bang/pop sound.

My machine boots...but I'm wary to start it up again right now. There WAS a CD in the drive....but it had been in there a good 4-5 days fine (bye-bye Warcraft 3). I THINK what I heard was the CD snap and the resulting damage was from the spinning disk.

My main fear (and my question) is whether or not this could be a PSU or power spike problem. My neighborhood has HORRIBLE problems with the power grid, and I sent my UPS back to APC 2-3 days prior for a product recall.

I've never dealt with electricity on the scale of a computer PSU, so I'm asking here with hope someone can rule out the power theory. A $30 drive is expendable but SCSI card, CPU, Hard Drive arrays are NOT.

-Thanks!

***
If I get some responses...I might even take some picks to put up on the web. This thing looks rather nasty.

 

[fredtam]

I doubt it was a power supply problem. My guess like you is the cd cracked and resulted in the damage. If your still concerned though a power supply tester is cheap and available at most pc stores. I would just remove the drive boot up and call the manufacturer screaming to see if they will replace the drive . I wouldn't tell them you make a habit of leaving your CDs in.

 

[SpongeBobPalmBay]

Yeah, this happned to a friend once... CD was bad ... fell apart in the drive and trashed the drive...

The computer was just fine. Pulled out the cd drive (what was left of it) and replaced it... all was well.

 

[Zepper]

Yeah, never leave CDs in your drives except when you are using them - your machine will boot up faster if there are no disks in your drives too. I've heard enough stories about CDs disintegrating in drives.

.bh.

 

[Jeff7]

I don't think that bad AC power would destroy a CD, but constant exposure to overvoltage/spikes will likely damage your power supply.
I too have had a CD destroyed in the drive, but it was while I was using it, so it was spinning at full speed - loud crack from the drive, but luckily nothing flew out at me. It actually worked afterwards, which was a bit of a surprise; I guess that the pieces of the disc missed all the critical parts of the drive.

 

[NittanyLAncer]

Thanks....I pretty much figured as much.