Why do CD/DVD drives have to lag systems?

Ever since CD-ROM drives first came out, computers have insisted on waiting for the CD to read data.  Why enslave yourself to the demands of a slower system of reading data?  Why wait for the laser to read or the drive to "get ready"? 

Why can't CD drives sent and recieve data independantly, without affecting performance of the OS?  Sure there's buffer memory, but I'm talking about an OS that doesn't have to jerk or wait whenever the CD/DVD drive feels like being lazy.  In other words, no matter how badly the drive fucks up or can't read anything, the OS just acknowledges it without any performance decrease in the rest of the OS, such as opening a window or another program on the hard drive.  Would it be that hard for stutters and stops in the drive to be reported in software, or to convince any busses not to have to wait for whatever the drive is doing?   

slow cd drives do not slow down linux unless said linux is running off of that cd drive.

It's obvious that you don't really know what an OS is or how one functions. And I can't be bothered to explain it to you because that would take days.

The short answer is that yes, it's really fucking hard to build a perfect OS, which is why all OSes suck. But a CD drive shouldn't and usually won't slow down any task that doesn't need data from it.

>>1
Automounting.
For some reason Windows makes CDs automount, but not floppies.

>>4
Yup. It's even in the code for the CD/DVD class driver in 2000 and XP (maybe even NT 4, but I haven't looked at the NT 4 DDK in ages); it'll check for a disc every few seconds unless you tell it not to. That and the "open/save/save as" common dialog in Windows "remembers" where things are, and will often insist on reading the CD-ROM's root directory even when it doesn't need to (directory entry read-ahead, I suppose; I've never looked it up). And it always seems to want to do it when the CD-ROM is spun down and has to take 5-10 seconds or so to spin back up, which can be annoying.

Oddly enough, back in 1995, the 6x CD-ROM drive I had didn't appear to have any lag.  The most amazing thing was that it was faster moving between folders on it than on my hdd!

I have also noticed that while burning CDs or reading a CD in Windows, half of the time I cannot do anything else on the system but in Linux everything runs fine.

Just image all your CDs/DVDs and mount them via Daemon Tools or whatnot.  With today's huge hard drives there is no reason to read a disc more than once.

>>4
Just a stupid question but isn't DOS/Windows automounting/autodemounting floopies when you access them (like executing "dir a:")? You insert and remove them whenever you want, this seems some kind of "automount" to me...

It's not. Mounting is used for caching data. Windows doesn't do caching on the floppy by default.

wtf?

Ok, >>1 is posting out of frustration for three different things:

1. The fact that Windows includes this "easy", "automatic" luser misfeature called autorun. Kill it with fire in your registry. Automounting is great, and Windows does it upon access to a drive. Autorunning is shit, and a security threat. Yet another braindead security hole from Microsoft.

2. The fact IDE drivers suck with read/write errors, especially Windows ones, these suck majorly. Everything is smooth and nice when there are no errors, but if you get an error, the driver will retry like FOREVER the motherfucker, instead of returning 0 read bytes on first error and letting the software try again.

3. The fact CD drives 16X and higher are FUCKING RETARDED because they try to read discs at insane speeds because lusers and business managers asked engineers to ("more ecks more good lol"). Drives go like this:
Step 1. Ok, try reading at 2X
Step 2. Ooo nice, I can read this shit, let's spin up to 10000X
Step 3. Oops, I can't actually read this fast reliably, let's spin down to 2X
Step 4. Go to step 2.

Also, seek times are terrible, because lusers don't care (or even understand) them; they just care for the ecks. LOOOL 100X IVE GOT A SUPERDRIVE LOLOL DIGITAL LIFESTYLE.

The best CD drive I ever had was a 6X Mitsumi one. Rock solid, stable, predictable speed, blazing fast seeking, no read errors, no spin down spin up spin down spin up bullshit.

>>9

maybe i'm dumb but the "mount" command in unix does more than just caching data

>>12
there's no reason to mount/unmount if you aren't caching data.

nobody uses them anymore.  they all use thumb drives

poop

read sicp

>>16
I'll give it a try! Thanks!

[boxxxy.jpg]

CSS

Test 1.

23 Name: Anonymous 2011-02-04 19:24

24 Name: Anonymous 2012-06-10 22:25

>>1
It's the mechanical delay while they spin up. Basic physics.

25 Name: Anonymous 2013-07-24 17:12

check em

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