Is constant ripping okay for a CD?

I always had this doubt. How many times can I rip a CD until it gets… you know… bad for ripping?
Does constant ripping screw a CD beyond repair..?

It has no effect on the CD – ripping is the same as playing. There is no physical wear on the disc; it goes in the drive, it rotates, a laser shines on it. That’s it. Your drive, on the other hand, will deteriorate if over-used – not much, and not quickly – but if you’re ripping a lot I would recommend giving it a rest every hour or so just to be safe.

It has no effect on the CD – ripping is the same as playing. There is no physical wear on the disc; it goes in the drive, it rotates, a laser shines on it. That’s it. Your drive, on the other hand, will deteriorate if over-used – not much, and not quickly – but if you’re ripping a lot I would recommend giving it a rest every hour or so just to be safe.

Thanks a lot, dude!

too many re-read for bad sector can killing drives fast, but other you should be ok 🙂

too many re-read for bad sector can killing drives fast, but other you should be ok 🙂

Much appreciated

Ripping will lead to disc rot, just like playing the CD – it isn’t good to excessively play back CDs, or keep them in direct sunlight for long periods. Ripping itself won’t hurt the disc any worse than playing it will (and like records both can damage the disc a little). Also, as stated above, bad sectors can wreck drives.

Check out this thread if you’re concerned about your discs in general:
Thread 179895

(link copied from above thread, op: Darth Revan)
Disc rot – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot)

Bad sectors do not wreck drives. (Optical media not have a sector structure in the traditional sense, anyway.)

Repeatedly re-reading the same block in a fruitless attempt to recover data from a damaged segment can wreck a drive, in the same sense that putting your car in reverse and flooring the accelerator for five hundred miles can wreck an engine. Only the most extreme and sustained abuse will have any chance of causing any sort of measurable damage to the drive, as they are designed to perform tens of millions of random read functions across their lifespan.

As originally stated, it’s nonetheless a good idea to schedule short but fairly regular "breaks" during protracted ripping sessions; during a ripping operation, the disc is rotating at high speed for extended periods of time; far faster than a CD or DVD is during the course of standard playback. Running the motor at high speeds for extended periods is NOT designed for, and can result in overheating. By comparison minor movements of the stepper motor during repeated re-reading sessions is not likely to have any impact of any kind other than that it will take a long time to complete. (As a general rule of thumb a competent ripping program will slow down the drive if it encounters a bad block; read accuracy is inversely proportional to rotation speed.)

Disc rot is caused by manufacturing flaws and the natural chemical reactions resulting from them. Many different substances (plastics, chemicals, aluminium reflective layers, lacquer, etc – three times as many in recordable media as distinct from media made from a glass master in a pressing plant.)

Assuming a drive is functioning correctly, playback (and ripping) is a NON-CONTACT exercise – absolutely nothing happens to the disc except a) it spins, and b) it has a low-power laser beam pointed at it. Neither of these activities cause or exacerbate disc rot. 99.99999% of discs that were stable at manufacturing will never rot or bronze, unless improperly stored or deliberately mistreated.

In vinyl, infinitesimal levels of damage are made upon every playback, because playback is achieved by physical contact between the vinyl and the playback medium. A finely ground diamond, traverses a groove cut in hardened vinyl. Repeated playback causes wear – repeated playback with a worn or poor quality stylus, a badly balanced cartridge, or a tonearm set at an improper tracking weight or anti-skate compensation, will cause wear much, much faster and in extreme cases, can render a record unplayable with just one playback.

As stated, CD playback/ripping is non-contact (aside from the obvious; the disc is rotated on a spindle) and does NOT cause wear or rot or have any other impact – negative or otherwise – on the disc.

Appropriate storage is, however, good advice – out of the sun, away from moisture, extreme temperatures, and extreme humidity. Keep them in the jewel case (minor scratches can usually be error-corrected during playback or ripping, but big ones can penetrate the laquer layer and actually physically destroy the reflective surface on which the data is stored – BE CAREFUL) or in some other kind of storage fit for purpose. (Those little padded plastic wallets are pretty good… but in honesty, the best place for a CD or DVD is in the jewel case.)

That’s very well written and accurate

I wanted to mention however that damage from playback can happen simply from picking up the disc and inserting it in the drive, there is always physical contact in the insertion of a disc, and that can cause some damage (it’s usually not excessive but it can happen), playback causes indirect wear from contact with the disc being inserted (not to be picky). The risk to a disk from playback is mainly from insertion, as that’s when damage is most likely to occur. I wasnt intending to imply that disk rot directly comes from the spinning of the disk in the drive as that’s not at issue. Frequent use is more likely to lead to some risk of laquer damage during insertion, which is why it’s a problem from excessive use (to clarify)

From what I understand most CDs can last up to 30 years without too much risk of detioration as long as they’re stored properly and handled carefully when used.

Regarding bad sectors wrecking drives, if a disc can’t be read properly, on some drives it will cause an issue where the drive may keep trying to access the sector forcing it to spin excessively when it shouldn’t (trying to find the missing or damaged sector) causing wear on the physical (spin) components of the drive. I’ve had this issue myself, and it was because of a damaged disc being unable to be read properly

Oh, absolutely… there’s nothing to stop you from scratching it, dropping it, fingerprinting it etc. The biggest risk to any mechanical "thing" is a dirty, greasy human. 😉

Your first post implied that playing the disc hurts it. Unless some crazy shit happens inside the drive, it doesn’t. If you’re reasonably careful when you’re taking it out of the box, putting it in the drive, etc, you’re fine. Anything bad that happens to that disc is 99.9999999999% going to be down to human clumsiness or plain bad luck. (Both are issues I seem to be fairly well in touch with!)

I’ve got a few CDs that actually ARE thirty years old and they’re all absolutely fine. They play, they rip, no worries. I’ve got a couple of discs from the early nineties (they’re all those notorious PDO pressings from Blackburn) that started to bronze about five years ago (I quickly backed them up) but that’s about it. Aside from those and discs I’ve damaged through my own carelessness, in twenty-five years of CD collecting, I have never had ANY kind of trouble whatsoever. That’s with no effort on my part other than keeping them in boxes away from extreme weather conditions. CDs are tough cookies. 🙂

Yea, I wasn’t clear enough in my explanation.

Its good to hear that 30 year old CDs are still holding up

I haven’t had many problems with mine, although I do have a weird burned CD that suddenly stopped working, hasn’t been used in 20 years, hasn’t bronzed at all, hasn’t been scratched or treated roughly, and Doesn’t have any noticeable detioration from disc rot either yet doesn’t work anymore

Its good to hear that 30 year old CDs are still holding up
I haven’t had many problems with mine, although I do have a weird burned CD that suddenly stopped working, hasn’t been used in 20 years, hasn’t bronzed at all, hasn’t been scratched or treated roughly, and Doesn’t have any noticeable detioration from disc rot either yet doesn’t work anymore

Whoa, a CD you burned? Or an original-bought-from-a-store CD?

It’s a burned one that I was given (didn’t burn it myself).

Burned CDs do not have the same life expectancy as machine-pressed store bought CDs.
Granted there are brands of CD-Rs that are better than others and will last longer, but the general rule is they will not last as long as legit machine-pressed CDs.

But as the OP asked, playback and ripping CDs is a non-contact action and you will go through many CD/DVD drives before you have to worry about your discs wearing out. Just handle your discs with care at all times, always rip them as soon as you get them, and stick to just playing copies of them. Put the originals away in a safe place.

playing back burn cds can make them lasting less (especially compared for pressed retail) – laser can degrading dye used faster (like for how museum store in dark to keep from light degrading).

Sorry, that is simply not true. The burn process – which literally IS a burn – gaps are made in the dye layer so that on playback, the reflective layer bounces back the laser light in the burned areas but is absorbed by the dye layer. That’s what it’s designed to do. The laser in playback mode does not affect the dye layer in any way.

CDRs degrade for the following reasons:
a) Poor quality media. (=Poor dye composition and cost-cutting meaning thinner layers meaning poor reflectivity meaning inaccurate data recording.)
b) Unintentional chemical reactions resulting from the manufacturing process. See above.
c) Poor quality burn (performed faster than the media is rated for, over-burned, or performed by a faulty drive.)
d) Improper storage, rough handling, scratches, exposure to sunlight, UV light, or excessive heat.

Oxidisation can destroy the reflective layer – again, a chemical reaction (silver is used in the reflective layer; gold-layered CDRs don’t suffer) and nothing to do with the playback laser.

There are many different combinations of dye/reflective layer used in the manufacture of CDRs – the first CDRs were made from a cyanine-based dye which proved unreliable, leading to the development of chemical additives intended to stabilise the dye layer. Cyanine is sensitive to sunlight and exposure can destroy such a disc in weeks if not days.