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Hot-Rod Your CD-RW Drive

Posted by timothy on from the or-is-it-april-already dept.

Anonymous Coward writes: "Currently almost everyone with a computer has a CD-ROM drive and also a big part of them have a CD-RW drive. But what if you want to spend less time on writing a CD-R ? You have to buy a new one, or, if you are a real geek, you just overclock it! Seems to be to good to be true ? It's not! Currently a lot of cheap manufacturers of CD-RW drives are using the same parts in their 32x,40x, and 48x drives and start to sell them at 32x, later to 40x and in end as 48x. and with a little upgrading of the firmware (totally legal) you will have a faster drive, because you remove its limits! It currently works on drives from Lite-On (who also makes drives for Memorex, TDK, Iomega, Cendyne, TraxData and Pacific digital all overclockable) And the list goes on as there are also overclock tricks for LG (32x -> 40x) and Sony drives (32x -> 48x). If you don't believe it, read all the reactions and the postings on the forums mentioned above!"

14 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Too good to be true? by stevenbdjr · · Score: 5, Funny

    And if you act now, we'll send you two kits for the price of one. That's the two CD-RW hot-rod kits, plus the terry cloth bath robe, absolutley FREE!

    1. Re:Too good to be true? by prof187 · · Score: 4, Funny

      But does it also chop jullienne fries?

      --

      My other sig is an import.
  2. old news...... by H3XA · · Score: 5, Informative

    another source of info

    http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific. asp?ArticleHeadline=Overclocking&Series=0

    with mods for -
    AOPEN
    HP
    Iomega
    LG
    Lite-On
    Plextor
    Ricoh
    Sony
    TraxData

    - HeXa

  3. Firmware by zapfie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Upgradinging of the firmware, totally legal? Ackk. You can do whatever you want with your CD-R drive and it would be totally legal- you have first sale rights. I will be scared if we live in a country where people even have to wonder if modifying their own hardware is "totally legal" or not.

    --
    slashdot!=valid HTML
    1. Re:Firmware by Angry+White+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is not *technically* just a firmware upgrade. This is circumventing/reverse engineering of their intellectual property, and in violation of the DMCA.

      Imagine what would happen to the world markets if you were to do this. Just sit back and watch all that nothing spread like wildfire!

      AWG

      Just like my opinion, my sarcasm's free! Just remember: You get what you pay for!

      --
      You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
    2. Re:Firmware by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny
      You can do whatever you want with your CD-R drive and it would be totally legal- you have first sale rights.

      You don't have a right to be an "X" thief. These companies are selling you Xs. You paid for 32 Xs. By modifying the drive, you stole up to 16 extra Xs from the manufacturer.

      If you bought a 6-cylinder Ford, would it be OK to break into the dealership and steal two more cylinders so you could have a V8? Of course not.

      Xs don't just grow on trees. Stop stealing them.

      If you really feel you need a bunch of Xs, you can get them in bulk from Microsoft, who sells them by the box. It really doesn't cost that much per X to stay legit.

  4. I can see it now... by papasui · · Score: 5, Funny

    LIVE AT 10.
    An area man inadvertently set fire to his dwelling while attempting to burn Jenna's Built for Speed with his self modified CDRW drive. When asked why he modified his CD recording device he stated. "My wife was coming home...."

  5. It wasn't new by jsse · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I worked at IBM an engineer told me the million dollars 'mainframe upgrade' was actually removing a jummper from the motherboard. So I started to remove one jumper at a time from my IBM PC to see if it'd run faster. (the answer is no)

    1. Re:It wasn't new by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And there's a good reason why the mainframe had a jumper, but the PC doesn't. IBM wants to sell you a future upgrade for the mainframe. They had no after-sale incentive for the PC, since they're just going to try selling you a new PC.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  6. Big deal by asavage · · Score: 5, Informative

    The difference between burning at 40 to 48 speeds is about 20 seconds. Some of us still have to use crappy 4 speed burners. Also a lot of CD media isn't even compatable at those speeds anyway.

  7. Re:ahh crap by jonnythan · · Score: 5, Informative

    You paid $80 to save about 20 seconds recording a cd? Is your time really worth $14,400/hr?

  8. Well.... is it really worth it? by hashinclude · · Score: 5, Informative
    These are the stats I have on my machine (p3-733, 512MB ram, IDE-100)

    1x - 1 hr 10 mins (total, yes I have had one)
    2x - 40 mins (actually something like 38)
    4x - 19-20 mins
    12x - 7 mins
    24x - 5 mins
    32x - 4:30 mins
    40x - ? (haven't upgraded my drive yet :P )

    My point being that as things are right now, IDE hard drives are not quite fast enough even with an 8MB buffer to keep up with the data transfer required (and yes, I am running my 7200 Maxtor 27GB as Primary master, and LG 32X CD-RW as Secondary Master on an Intel 815EEA2 board)

    How does overclocking (and possibly destroying the drive mechanism, though rare) really help me burn CD faster? Current software / hardware configs give me no better than 4:30 mins .. (while the 24x gives ~5:20)

    I think this is something like the 52x and 60x and 72x CDROM, where the number behind the X stands for MAX ... meaning that with optimal (ideal?) parameters, the drive gives 72x (1x = 150kbps)

    I'd much rather stick with my * unmodified * 32x drive, thanks.

    --
    US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
  9. Why NOT To Do This by Caraig · · Score: 4, Informative

    Most high-speed drives seem to not take into account the stresses placed upon CDs. A 56x drive imposes a HUGE amount of momentum on the disc. This is something to be of concern about. Even more so, when you consider the amount of HEAT being generated. Not only by the laser, but by the drive's motor itself.

    The situation is worsened when you consider the write-laser, which imparts much more heat onto the disc than the read-laser. Be very aware of this! The faster the drive, the more heat and stress being put onto the disk. Bad Things Can Happen.

    I had the displeasure of having a disc EXPLODE in my CD-ROM drive last week, because of heat and stress placed upon it. I'm lucky I didn't have the thing at neck-level since pieces of disk flew across the room.

    --
    "I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
  10. Re:What are you thinking? by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Informative

    I suppose this will have to do with the media properties rather than the drive.

    It has to do with how well the drive burns the media. To oversimplify, how do you know that the 32X drive has adequate power at the laser when overclocked to 48X?

    It would be a simple matter to check the md5sums. dd if=/dev/cdrom | md5sum -

    That doesn't show error rates. That shows if there were one or more unrecoverable errors. If you get a CD with a lot of raw errors that are recovered, the CD will be much less tolerant of damage, degradation, etc., before it develops unreverable errors. It's also less likely to work as reliably when you read it in multiple drives.