[Paranoia] Freshly damaged drive w/ cdparanoia?

[CJ Kucera]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Cleaning the drive seems like a logical next step at this point. If 
> there was any dust on the damaged CD, or even if there weren't, it could 
> be time for spring cleaning.

Hm, I hosed it out with an air blower, in case some gob of dog hair
mysteriously found its way in there or something (anyone with a dog who
sheds even a little should be familiar with the magical teleportation
capabilities of dog hair), though it seemed to be quite pristine inside.
Towards the end of my attempts I even took the drive apart a bit to see
if there was anything obviously wrong with it, which enabled me to
blow some air through the underside of the drive and out the front,
which should have dislodged anything major.

I suppose, though, that you were probably referring to one of those
actual drive-cleaning kits, with the disc w/ the little brush thing
attached to the bottom?  I'll see if I can scour up one of those.  I
was poking around pricewatch last night and the cost of DVD burners
seems to have plummeted quite nicely since when I bought this one,
though, so I may just end up contributing to a landfill somewhere.

> As an aside, I don't run paranoia on a burner, I have seen the 
> suggestion that the head positioning mechanism on some drives is moving 
> enough extra mass to accelerate wear and results in slower seeks. I 
> *think* that's at least partially urban myth, but I have several 
> machines which came with read-only drives which do a fair enough job and 
>  cover the possibility that something could be damaged.

Hm, that's good to think about.  I actually *used* to have a regular
CDRom in there that I'd rip from instead of the burner, but there
was something weird with the drive firmware on that one which would
create one tiny (but quite noticeable) "pop" at the beginning of Track 1
on any CD I tried to rip, so I eventually got tired of tracking that
down and just moved over to using the burner.

Anyway, off to more troubleshooting I go.  Thanks!

-CJ

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