On Fri, 2 Jan 2004 17:55:13 -0800, "Eric Gisin"
wrote:

snip

I don't think the read mode of any CD/DVD drive is going kill the drive in
under 5 years.

Then you haven't bothered to check the dead parts bins at many
computer shops. Optical drives die all the time, or just read so
poorly that they're not reliable... same thing.


Loading your system up with redundant CD/DVD drives does risk spin-up power
sags, which can cause bad sectors on your hard drives.

Nonsense. If that happens the problem wasn't an optical drive, it was
an inadquate power supply. I'm not so sure HDDs will even suffer bad
sectors these days, generally it takes a HUGE voltage sage to be
significant, not an amp or two.