What's It Do?

A few years ago, CD-ROM drives were slow, and everyone was looking for a way to speed them up; now, they are excessively fast, and it's causing some problems. Noise, vibrations, and short spindown times plague most modern drives. For quickly transferring large chunks of data, this is an acceptable trade-off, but those who wish to stream audio and video from a disc are often left disappointed by poor performance and distracting noise. With many drives, it is possible to set the read speed to a value lower than the maximum speed. This makes the disc spin slower, reducing mechanical noise. Many also let you set the spindown time to a value higher than the default. This makes the disc stay spinning and ready to access data for longer spans of time. Unfortunately, most CD-ROM drive vendors do not give you the programs you need to change these settings. That's where CD-ROM Tool comes in.

People are using CD-ROM Tool to:

• Reduce drive noise when listening to MP3s or videos burned onto CDs.
• Reduce drive noise and prevent the drive from spinning down when playing games off of CDs.
• Get rid of stutters when playing DVDs by adjusting spindown time.
• Increase a drive's reading accuracy by slowing down the read speed. The faster the disc spins, the greater the chance of data being read incorrectly. This is an especially important factor when reading scratched discs or CDRs that have poor reflectivity.
• Lock their drives to keep unwelcome hands from ejecting the drive.