Introduction
This section answers the main background questions about the Product Safety Notice and CD ROM Safety Advice that we have issued.

We have found that in very rare circumstances, some high speed CD ROM drives (48X or higher speed) can become dangerous when used with CD ROM disks with small cracks. The result is that the disk can be damaged further or shattered and, in very exceptional circumstances, fragments of the broken disk can be expelled through the front cover of the drive at high speed. This could cause serious physical injury. We have confirmed that the problem can only occur when a damaged CD ROM disk is used in the CD ROM drive.

This issue may also affect some computers made by other manufacturers, and if you have concerns we would advise you to talk to your other suppliers.

We have confirmed that the problem can only occur when a damaged CD ROM disk is used in the CD ROM drive. You should immediately advise all users of RM computers with high speed CD ROM drives that each time they put a CD ROM in the drive they should check to ensure that the disk does not contain cracks. They should not use any media that has a crack.

You must ensure that CD ROM disk checking is communicated to all computer users, and implemented immediately. This is because it could cause serious injury to continue to use CD ROM disks with cracks in high speed CD ROM drives.

How long have you known about this?
The first report of a shattered disk escaping from the CD ROM drive of a PC was made to RM during the summer term 2001. RM recovered the first such drive from our customer on 11th June 2001 when it was immediately sent to the manufacturer for laboratory testing. Further incidents in June and July 2001 indicated this problem was not a 'one-off' and much work has been done during June, July and August to understand the nature of the problem and ascertain the best possible course of action. (We have seen a total of 73 instances of disks shattering in drives since June 2000, with 18 instances of egress).

How many cases have you seen? Has anybody been injured?
The problem of CD ROMs shattering in high speed drives is not new to CD ROM drive manufacturers. In RM's experience to date, we are aware of 18 cases where parts of a shattered CD ROM have escaped from the front of the drive, and in none of these cases has anybody been injured. There have been no instances from drives where RM shields or firmware updates have been made. RM has taken action to minimise the possibility that someone could be injured in the future, RM acted promptly to ensure the continued safety of our customers, their staff and students.

Do software companies know about this? What are they doing?
We alerted BESA (the British Education Suppliers Association) and ESPA (the Education Software Producers Association) so that they could take appropriate actions when selecting CD media for duplication. We continue to work with CD media manufacturers as part of our ongoing research, but clearly CDs are produced around the world and so we suspect many manufacturers of CDs are not aware of the issue. Additionally we have seen some particularly brittle CD-R blanks that will of course be used directly by consumers rather than software companies.

Why haven’t my other suppliers told me?
Some other suppliers to UK education have made announcements concerning this issue.  RM expects some other computer manufacturers to be affected by disk break up in high-speed drives given that many computer manufacturers source and install their CD ROM drives in PCs in the same standard manner as RM. But RM cannot speak on behalf of those manufacturers.

I’ve spoken to another supplier and they told me that there isn’t a problem, or that it’s just an RM problem?
We would strongly advise you to satisfy yourself in this regard. We believe that we have shipped a small proportion of the many types of CD ROM drive which we believe to be affected, and we believe that this issue will clearly affect other manufacturers who have used any of the affected drives. We consider it our duty to inform customers that have purchased RM PCs. RM have used the affected drive in an entirely standard way and based on this fact we do not expect it to be purely an RM problem.

Why is RM acting if nobody else has?
We do sell directly and support directly the vast majority of our customers - this may have enabled us to spot the problem earlier than other manufacturers.

What is the drive manufacturer doing about it?
In association with CD ROM drive manufacturers we continue to research into the safety of different CD ROM drives and CD ROM media.

Why aren’t you advertising this in the national press?
This is not like a consumer product where we don't know who our customers are. We can identify every customer that will be affected by this announcement so we are communicating directly with them all, and with the wider market place as appropriate eg advisers, DfES.

Why haven’t I seen anything in the press?
This is a rare incident and we believe RM are the first to act.