[Paranoia] Freshly damaged drive w/ cdparanoia?

[Kevin Rennert]

Just to chip in my $.02, I had also had a drive die under the same 
circumstances several years ago when I was ripping my entire collection. 
A 48x creative reader was having difficulty with a particular track, and 
I just let it run. Came back the next day and the drive wasn't 
responding at all. Rebooted and it behaved similarly to how your drive 
is behaving, if I remember right. Totally useless as a reader from then 
on.  I just chalked it up to another crappy product made by creative (or 
at least branded by creative) and that having it read and re-read the 
same chunk of CD over and over just wore it out.  I haven't had this 
happen with any of the other readers or burners I've used, despite using 
cdparanoia extensively with them.

My guess is that, for the 30 or 40 bucks that a replacement drive costs, 
you've already invested too much of your own precious time in figuring 
out the problem.  See if you can get a warranty replacement and move on 
-- I doubt it was anything out of the ordinary that cdparanoia made it 
do that caused it to pooch, it just couldn't stand up to the repetitive 
motion.

-kevin

Dale E. Martin wrote:
>>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.
> 
> 
> FWIW, I ripped my collection of 500 cds on a Ricoh 4x burner.  It still
> worked when I replaced it with a DVD burner - which I'm currently using to
> rip with cdparanoia as well.  (And it is waiting to go into another machine
> - it will probably still get used from time to time.)  I haven't noticed
> any problems.  Burners are so cheap nowadays, I've decided not to worry
> about the wear and tear.
> 
> Take care,
>      Dale