Larian Studios Forums General Chat Cd Drive Speed

What EXACTLY does the speedX mean on a Cd drive? EX: 56x

the X in the speed for cd drive is explained in these webpages;

http://www.webopedia.com
http://www.howstuffworks.com
http://www.pctechguide.com/08cd-rom_CLV.htm

simply, the X means how fast the drive will spin the disc in order to get maximum amount of data into or out of it. hope that helps.

Yea. X is the unit all measurements are relative to. X could mean something like 7,600 spins per second or something. But to make things simple, they've taken some constant as the unit and then displayed all drive speeds as a multiple of that constant.

My laptop drive is 4X. =/
56X is fast enough. Years ago I remember reading articles that it was too fast - too hot or something. I'd assume such issues are resolved now.

Put simply, x1 is the minimum speed you need to play a music CD. It takes 80 minutes for a x1 CD drive to read a CD. A x4 drive would read it in 20 minutes. A x54 would read it in 1 minute, 29 seconds (plus warm up time).

lol yeah my CDs are always really hot when they get out. Its like an oven in there. SO wow it would read the whole CD in 1 minute! amazing!

Of course, if you're copying it to hard drive, your hard drive needs to be fast enough to accept the data that quickly.