this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Witches VS Patriarchy
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“Rip. Mix. Burn.”
Instead of the sound of a chainsaw, it's the sound of a 70x drive on the verge of exploding
I thought the disks would shatter if spun much above 42x ...
But I was told that many moons ago so maybe my information is outdated. Or maybe it was just never accurate.
I mean, I think technically the "x" is the read speed, and not necessarily indicative of what the maximum RPM is.
Ah, I was always told that ##x was how many times faster than some classic model of cd drive the disk was spun.
I always thought listening to music was 1x = 76 minutes, so a 4x cd burner would burn a disc in like 4 minutes....
Based on a few things, we were both right. Primarily I'm going to reference this (which corroborates what you said, except it claims 74 minutes):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_storage_media_writing_and_reading_speed
Something called "Ask Leo" does say there's a high risk of a disk shattering when spun above 48x, which is apparently equivalent to 24000 RPM. However, I can't vouch for the credibility of this site any more than I can for the person who originally made that claim to me (except that I think it was my dad and he was usually pretty dependable).
https://askleo.com/what_does_the_x_in_a_48x_speed_cdrom_mean/
Apparently Mythbusters demonstrated that a disk will shatter at 30000 RPM but, as sometimes happens, their methodology was criticized. This, it seems, is because they spun the disk on a Dremel rather than in a more realistic environment.
24,000rpm is INSANELY fast. That's 400 rotations per second.