Tune up CDROM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ >From Linux documentation: Some CDROM drives are capable of changing their head-speed. There are several reasons for changing the speed of a CDROM drive. Badly pressed CDROMs may benefit from less-than-maximum head rate. Modern CDROM drives can obtain very high head rates (up to 24-times is common). It has been reported that these drives can make reading errors at these high speeds, reducing the speed can prevent data loss in these circumstances. Finally, some of these drives can make an annoyingly loud noise, which a lower speed may reduce. Howto ~~~~~ The recommended way to do it is with a program called 'setcd' . It's kinda old, but won't be too hard to find on the Net. Use it with : setcd -x Also you can try : echo current_speed:4 >/proc/ide//settings but you'll need root privileges. (It didn't work for me - Gabucino) I use following command too : echo file_readahead:2000000 >/proc/ide//settings for 2MB prefetched reading from the file (it's useful for scratched CDROMs). It's recommended that you tuneup your CDROM drive also with hdparm : hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 to enable using DMA access, readahead, and IRQ unmasking. (if you don't understand these, *read the hdparm manpage*) Final words ~~~~~~~~~~~ Please refer to "/proc/ide//settings" for fine-tuning your CDROM. Nick Kurshev & Gabucino