LinuxLove.info

Slow Down That Noisy CD/DVD Drive

Ever been watching a DVD or streaming a video file and been uber distracted by your 4 year old drive’s rattle? Slow it down once and for all!

Now, there are lots of guides around the internets for doing this, but for me, none of them worked. Not one technique out of about five. Then one day I came across a small application appropriately enough named “speedcontrol” writen by Thomas Fritzsche and man, it’s been smooth sailing since. The following terminal commands should you get you setup:

cd ~
wget http://linuxlove.info/files/speedcontrol
sudo mv speedcontrol /usr/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/speedcontrol

Now, whenever you’d like to slow that drive down, simply run a:

sudo speedcontrol -x 2 /dev/dvd
(you may have to change the path to your device if it differs)

and enjoy the pure, streaming silence. To reset it back to max speed when you’re finished, type:

sudo speedcontrol -x 0 /dev/dvd

or just restart your machine.