Why do some CD-ROM drives choke on a particular disk?

[StreetRacer]

I've run into this several times with different drives and different disks. When a software install disk is inserted in my CD-ROM the drive will stutter and hic-up, the mouse pointer will freeze and jerk, and it'll be like pulling teeth to get the drive's drawer open to get the disk outa there!!!

Then I turn around and put the same disk in my wife's system with a different brand drive and it runs smooth as silk.

Conversely, a different disk my get the same reaction in her drive, but run fine in mine.

What causes this? I've seen it off and on for the 5 or so years I've been messin' with confusers with multiple drives and disks.

Thanks for any help,

Steve

 

[Ryukumu]

That's a good question. I've had a similar experiance with some audio CDs (Macross 7 Best Collection from SonMay for you anime nuts [like me] out there). My solution: Just use a different CD drive. ^_^

 

[StreetRacer]

Thanks for the reply. That's what I do too. But sometimes, like today it's a pain in the rear.

I sent my son and his wife an ATI TV Wonder so they could capture vid clips of the new grandbaby and email them to us. Well sure as hell, their CD-ROM wouldn't read the disk. I had to send him to Staples to get a new drive (he's gonna return it tomorrow).

It's a pain to try to help inexperienced users install new hardware over the phone (long distance) without that extra annoyannce.

I'm just wondering what's the difference in drives that causes this, just for curiosity's sake. I don't really expect a "fix".

Take care,

Steve

 

[ceraph]

One of the biggest factors in terms of CD and drive readability is the tolerance of the laser to irregular or low-reflective portions of a surface.

CD's work -- obviously -- by reflecting light. On a professionally mastered CD, physical pits and lands (hills and valleys) are etched onto the surface. On a burned CD, the dye mimics the reflectivity of pits and lands.

Some CD's, including audio CD's and burned CD's with poor quality media end up with irregular patterns of pits and lands that some low quality drives have problems reading. What usually happens when a decent drive hits one of these areas is that it does a double-take. It will usually pop the CD back to the location it was reading, and attempt to read at a lower speed, and will continue to do so until it gets something.

What a poor quality drive will usually do is to treat the irregular or damaged surface area as a data flaw and, depending on firmware programming, either die or just send faulty data through.

 

[rw120555]

The CD-R Primer has a good discussion of this and all sorts of other CD issues. See in particular the section on "A happy medium."

The CDR FAQ is also good for all sorts of questions -- see section 7 for a discussion of Media.

I'm a little surprised you are having trouble with commercially made disks though -- most of the problems I have heard have been with CDRs. I wonder if some of these problems might be more related to your system configuration -- e.g. a particular program just doesn't get along very well with the hardware and software in one machine but does get along with the configuration of another machine. I've certainly encountered problems like that before, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if installing some new piece of hardware like an ATI Video Card caused a lockup that might be misdiagnosed as a CD problem.

 

[Mday]

<< One of the biggest factors in terms of CD and drive readability is the tolerance of the laser to irregular or low-reflective portions of a surface. >>



i could not have set it better myself, since i lack the um, eloquence.

 

[MrCookie]

I had a Delta CD-Rom drive that wouldn't read my original Win2000 disk....
Sounded like it was going to rattle the whole case loose. I thought it might have been caused by the disk not being perfectly balanced.

 

[Ryukumu]

I have a Delta 12x DVD-ROM drive. I like the DVD features, but this drive is quirky sometimes... oh well, I saw it for $50 in the newspaper and I went for it. My fault for buying a cheap-o drive. -_-

What this drive does sometimes is you put in a CD and it'll start to spin, but spin slowly, stop spinning, spin again, stop, spin, stop, SOMETIMES I'll get blue-screen errors saying something like 'please put cd with serial number [add thing here] into the drive or hit ESC to abort' (I usually hit ESC, open the drive, then put the disk back in and try again). This doesn't happen all the time, but it can be irritating...

That's not as bad as my CD-burner drive though. I have an OLD 2x8 burner (that's 2 write, 8 read-- doesn't even re-write) that sometimes you put in a CD and while it won't bog the system down while tryign to read it (usually) the front blinker lights on the drive will blink in unison as if saying 'this disk sucks and screw you'. Pop the drive open, stick the disk in again, and it'll work usually. This is a drive from 'back in the day' when $300 was DIRT CHEAP, this was the cheapest drive I could find. It performs accordingly, though it's usually mostly reliable when it comes to burning a CD... slow as heck though. ^_^

I'm planning on upgrading my CD-R soon to a CD-RW, I'll get a good name brand (the store I shop at carries Plextor burners, my parents have one and it's fantastic-zox) and use that for regular CD reading.

Aren't computers FUN? ^_^