computer blowing up cd's

I had two games that I played alot Age of mythology and simcity 2000 both have blown up in my drives.
3 Months ago I had age of mythology in my dvd rom(game year old).
I was not even playing the game.I was on the web and the drive was spinning and I heard a bang like a gunshot that i could not figure out were it came from hours latter i went to remove the cd and the drive was somewhat stuck and my game was in a thousand pieces.I removed and opened up and cleaned the dvd rom out.(this game had a few hairline cracks in the middle)
Today i was playing simcity2000 6 years old on my cd-rw and i heard the same noise and i opened up the drive and the same thing
I have had a compaq before that the simcity worked fine for 5years.Now i have a compaq presario 1-1/2 year old winxp sp2 and i have not tweaked these drives yet i have 2 blown up cd's.Can anyone make any sense of this????

 

There have been instances due to the speed of the new drives blowing up Cds and DVD's. Mythbusters did an episode on this.