Uh oh ive got a huge problem.

[jsawicki]

ok i was reinstalling warcraft 3 and something happened and when it was spinning around it must have caught on something and the disk shattered. its in about a million pieces and they are all inside the drive. how would i go about getting all these pieces out?

[csp]

The easiest thing to do is to probably rma it. It is the drives fault so it should be easy.

[jsawicki]

whats rma?

[csp]

Return to Manufature

[rjfvillarosa]

How old is the drive? if its out of warranty it's down to you.
Are you confident enough to pull the side off your computer? It is very easy to disconnect the two cables, take out the four mounting screws and remove the drive. Once you have done this you can remove the four small screws that hold the case together, then this will give you access to the inside of the drive and you can remove all the broken parts of the cd. Some cd player cases are held together by 4 small screws with "Torx" bit heads(sometimes known as stardrive), your local tool shop/ hardware store should be able to supply you with a one off driver or even a nice small set for only a few bucks.

[jsawicki]

well the drive is just a cd-rw so its not a huge loss. im not gona go through warenty through the manufacturer over a $20 item. its just not worth it. i guess i can try to clean it out sometime. for now ill just use my dvd+rw drive i guess.

[Spartan]

Pull the cover off the drive and shake it out. Some are attached with screws but some have metal tabs you will have to bend out. Considering it is only a 20 dollar lose it is worth trying....

-Spartan

[Yuanji]

can you eject the drive? if you can id eject it then shake it out

[rjfvillarosa]

You should read "punked out comp's" thread in the general discussion forum about exploding cd's. excellent piece of literature.

[roomwithamoose]

Did anyone see the episode of "MythBusters" when they made a cd explode? They had to put it on a nuematic powered drill and got it up to 32,000RPM! It completely exploded, and they had a dummy sitting next to it. That would slice you up pretty good.

Anyway, I personally would just tear it apart and see what's inside, and then go get a new one. I'd be more bummed about the lost game disc. Maybe you could send the peices to Blizzard and they'll send you a new one.

[Cricket]

A CD disk usually shatters because it's defective, not the drive. We won't be seeing optical drives faster than 52x because anything faster than that seems to cause CDs to shatter more frequently. If you have a 52x CD-ROM drive, you might want to check the condition of the CD disk before you insert it. If it's really badly scratched up, it might shatter.

Cricket

[Jaggannath]

I agree totally with Cricket here... all the drive does is spin the CD, it's a weakness in the CD's manufacture or, I'd imagine in your case, durability that resulted in the shattered CD.
It'd definitely be worth trying to scam another CD out of Blizzard, though I'm not sure they'll be willing to play ball

[Yuanji]

id ask ur friends to burn you a copy of WC3

[roomwithamoose]

I don't know, Blizzards usually pretty cool about that stuff. It's definitely worth a try. Especially if you send them whats left of te original disc.

[jsawicki]

well ya. if i burned a copy from a friend, it wouldnt be entirely illigal considering i own a cdkey for it and stuff and i "used" to own a copy of warcraft 3 xpansion

[Markoman01027]

Originally Posted by jsawicki whats rma?

Return Materials Authorization. You apply for the RMA for the product that is defective. The company approves it. You send them the defective part, and they send you a new unit of it.

[Hi Ho]

The easiest thing to do is to probably rma it. It is the drives fault so it should be easy.

The drive does not cause a CD to explode. A defective CD will cause that. Just take it apart and clean all the peices out. It should work fine.

[Yuanji]

Originally Posted by jsawicki well ya. if i burned a copy from a friend, it wouldnt be entirely illigal considering i own a cdkey for it and stuff and i "used" to own a copy of warcraft 3 xpansion

umm burning for archival purposes is legal. you paid for it they gave you a faulty disk. technically you should've archived it but i guess its legal as it was blizzard's fault

[roomwithamoose]

Archiving is legal, distributing and selling is not. But it's kinda hard to archive a cd when it exsists in more peices than it's supposed to, unfortunately.

[Yuanji]

well i think in this instance it would be ok cuz he just doesn't wanna wait to get the game from blizzard and he did purchase it and it was blizzards fault.

[inflames988]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa You should read "punked out comp's" thread in the general discussion forum about exploding cd's. excellent piece of literature.

where is this? i wana see lol...btw i use pretty crappy cd-rs and rws to burn cds, etc, will this ever cause a problem? Ive tested my 52x cdrw drive and it usally only reads about 30x even tho its supposed to be 52x24x52x

[Hi Ho]

That thread is right HERE.