Re: Which is Best?

> DZ> Well...not exaclty.  The spped refers to the rate  the disk
> DZ> spins.  A quad
> DZ> speed spins 4 times faster than an audio CD player.  The
> DZ> faster the disk can
> DZ> spin, the more data that can be accessed.
> Then why don't manufacturers just make CDROM drives which can spin 500x
> faster than an audio CD player, and then we'd all be very happy? :-)
> Surely it's to do with the speed at which the laser itself can read,
> rather than the speed at which it spins?
> See ya
> Misha

     It's fairly simple.. The faster a disk spins, the more likely it is to
get jitters if not perfectly balanced.  Also, the read heads have more
difficulties in getting to the correct spot at the correct time.. If you look
at all the 8x drives, they have a seek time of about 200-300 ms, while there
is a 6.7x with a seek rate of 130 ms. The problem has it's roots in trying to
push a technology meant to read linear data off of a spiral with minimal
movement to perform high-speed reads all over the disk.