CD Drive Wearing Out?

[The Iron Man]

I've been happily using dBpoweramp Reference R12.4 for the last two years now with my Plextor PX-230A.

So far I have ripped over 4000 individual tracks. I'm just getting a little concerned that the drive might be starting to wear out. 4000 individual tracks is an awful lot of ripping, right?

My question is, when the drive starts to wear out - will I start getting errors in rips and R12.4 telling me that certain rips were un-secure?What signs should I look for that will tell me my drive is wearing out and needs replacing?

While I'm here...is R12.4 really out of date, and should I be upgrading?

[garym]

Re: CD Drive Wearing Out?

You're missing a lot of nice features by not using newest version. A drive can go bad at any time, but I've ripped 50,000 tracks on the drive in my laptop without any issues so far.....

[The Iron Man]

Re: CD Drive Wearing Out?

Thanks, Gary.

I only use R12.4 purely for ripping to .wav only.

Are there any changes in the ripping process in the new version?

[Spoon]

Re: CD Drive Wearing Out?

Full version changes:

http://dbpoweramp.com/Version-Changes-DMC.htm

Drives do wear out, you will notice a significant increase in re-rips

[The Iron Man]

Re: CD Drive Wearing Out?

Thanks, Spoon.

I'll look at upgrading as soon as I can!

[Porcus]

Re: CD Drive Wearing Out?

4000 individual tracks is an awful lot of ripping, right?

Nah. Plextor boasts of a MTBF of 125000 POH at 25% duty cycle, which means that at this load (which I think means it is on at all times but active only a quarter of it) means it should last for 14 years. You should of course expect less in a real-life situation outside their labs, but a rough calculation: Divide those 125000 hours by 4 and multiply by 1.5 if your average CD is 40 minutes, you get 50000. That is if each 40-minutes CD is read for 40 minutes; if you do burst rips (no error correction), it is ten or maybe even twenty times as fast. 4000 tracks? 400 CDs? Not much.

(My main ripping drive -- which sits in my Sony XL1-B* changer -- has done some six thousand CDs and still works.)