Calling all techs: I installed my first CD/DVD Drive...Now for the bad news

[Duggo]

The physical installation went easy enough. From all the reviews I've read, (of the DVD drive) This wasn't a problem anticipating having. There wasn't even a word mentioned in the manual (whose instructions I followed for the procedure, about this.) Maybe there is under "Troubleshooting" I don't know.

The drive works, and is recognized/mounts by "My Computer" but at boot up, it's something like: "Drive 1 not found" followed by the technology of the controller. When the jumper was at master on the newly installed drive it used to be just drive one. Now, it's drive 1 and drive 3. For the life of me I can't figure out what those are. I just know they are not the newly added DVD/CD drive that I installed. That the BIOS sees. And finally, The hard drive, which is either PATA or SATA -0 (as it was showing up in the BIOS)

the previous drive that I uninstalled the jumper was on "Cable Select" OK. so I moved the jumper from "Master" (they shipped it that way,) to "CS" (just like the last one) and my BIOS starts acting like it just got rejected by a DVD drive for the first time. I mean really.

If you could help me out so my BIOS could find Drives 1 and 3, I'd really appreciate it.

Sorry for the length of the post.

 

[Duggo]

Update: I tried making the new LG the master, and the old CD drive, the slave, and now Drives 1, 2, and 3 are not found.

Then I tried making the old CD drive "CS" (cable select) and the LG staying the master, no dice. Drives 1-3 not found. At least yesterday it was finding my LG. (Drive 2)

So it's gone from bad to worse.

Thankfully, it (the BIOS) is aware of my HDD.

Anyone? Please help.

 

[Luc]

All right, it's been a while since I touched those but what I would look for to fix the problem.

1-Your Hard Disk should always be 'Master'
2-The DVD should be either 'Slave' or 'Cable Select'
3-If you don't want the CD anymore, take it out.

Now, in there, you would plug 2 devices (HD/DVD). If it's the case, someone told me one day that a Master (HD) goes at the end of the cable and the Slave goes in the middle (DVD). Is that right? No idea, but the installation worked most of the time.

I'm wondering, were you using 3 devices on 1 cable (HD/DVD/CD)?

When you plug the cable in the HD/DVD, you need to make sure that you have pin 1 and pin 40 aligned correctly vs. Motherboard. Also, make sure they are pushed to the bottom, it happened a few times that I didn't have a fully pushed cable.

Make sure that all the pins on the drives are straight

Finally, if this doesn't work, I would try to install the HD on a cable and the DVD on a different cable. Unless they don't make computers that way anymore, they use to have 2 IDE plugs for the HD (IDE0 and IDE1 if I remember correctly). HD (primary) would go on IDE0 and secondary (DVD) on IDE1.

 

[Iakona]

I just had to mess around with my machine and I can confirm that (for my setup at least) the drive at the end of the cable was master, and the next drive was slave.
It's a little hard to say exactly what is happening based on your post, but I'd be willing to talk you through it if you can call me while in front of the computer. Tomorrow is opening day for my son's tee-ball, so it'll have to be in between games (and parades and whatnot) but I'm sure I can find some time. I'll send you a PM.

 

[VampyreWolf]

I've had a few cases where the system would only recognize the HD or the optical drive unless both were set to cable select.

If you use one cable, you have 2 options:
1. Set your jumpers to master and slave & make sure that the device is plugged into the right plug (master on the end of the cable, slave 1/4 of the way down the cable). This would mean that your CD has to be set to Master and your HD is set to Slave.
2. Set your jumpers both to cable select. The system should automatically make your CD master and the HD slave.

If you use 2 cables, set both to Master and use the plug on the end of the cable.


I've done this a few times, on just about every configuration of system you can think of. My 2nd and 3rd jobs are IT work.

 

[Stubblefield]

You haven't mentioned your OS, and it would be helpful to know the motherboard as well, as it sounds like a BIOS issue.

I always set all drives to CS and set primary and secondary drives in the BIOS, it is much easier.

 

[quixand]

I don't think we actually need to know the OS (he did say it shows up on his "My Computer", by the way).

What I would like to know is this:
1. How many hard drives do you have in there?
2. How many cd/dvd drives/burners?
3. For all of the above are they SATA or PATA? (SATA use small flat ~1cm wide cables that go to a single device, PATA use flat 10cm wide cables that connect to the motherboard and two other devices).


From the above it sounds like you're juggling two hard drives and two cd/dvd drives, so here's how I would set that up for all PATA devices:

1. Set the jumper on the hard drive with the operating system to "Master"
2. Set the jumper on the second hard drive to "Slave"
3. connect the two using the same cable (order doesn't matter. Connection order only matters when using Cable Select on both devices, in which case there's an extra pin in the connector at the end which makes the device connected to it master.)
Now, IF you're keeping both CD/DVD drives, do this:
4. Set the one placed higher up in the case (e.g. the one that's easier to reach to place cds into) as Master. It's usually better if this is a DVD drive in case you want to install operating systems that come on a DVD, and a lot of them do these days. Set the second drive to Slave and then connect both using the same cable. Again, order doesn't really matter here if you set the two drives to Master and Slave.
IF you only keep one of the drives:
4`. Set it to master, connect it to the connector at the end of a cable.
5. go to the bios and set the correct boot order (e.g. floppy/dvd/hard-drive or hard-drive/dvd/floppy and so on) for your needs. On older machines I usually use DVD/Hard-drive, on newer ones I set it to just Hard Drive first, because there's an option to hit a key during the bios boot sequence to select an alternative (from default) device to boot from anyway.


If anything there uses SATA, then it's just one device per cable, and the order doesn't really matter, but you have to remember which one is the hard drive with the operating system and then set the correct boot order in the bios. For SATA devices the boot order is device specific and there will be a list of all connected SATA drives with their manufacturer/model information to choose from.

 

[Duggo]

Thanks so much for all the replies.

Sorry for the late reply.

On the first attempt, which in hindsight went well, The BIOS said, Drive one (which was in the off position) I turned to the on position, because, the text above said that was the factory default position, and seemed like a good thing.

Ahhh, but here's the thing. Drive one, (which I didn't find out until 3 days later,) is the "slave" to my hard drive; of which there is none. So it was in the off position.

Drives 2 and 3 it turns out, were the LG and the existing CD player. They also weren't found. So I messed around with the jumpers in every conceivable position/combination; until I heard about (and understood,) the master/slave combination, which I settled on.

The second to last time I opened the case, the IDE cables were poorly connected, because the effort it unplug it from its connectors was alot. So, I just wanted to apply ample pressure, for the connection. Well, after my hand hit the cable twice, it fell off. So after I connected the cables good and tight, (like I found them, in the first place,) It found drive 2 and 3.

Then all that remained to be done is turn off drive 1, and I was in business. However, this wasn't before I endured calluses from trying to pull out the Molex plugs. But I did save professional installation charges, and better than that was the feeling of accomplishment which came at Midnight, (the witching hour,) How appropriate. There's no feeling in the world like it.

 

[quixand]

It certainly beats the alternative feeling, that comes when your computer is still in pieces and not booting around 6am and you need to go to work or school at 8...
Ah. The good old days.

 

[Aevum]

one of my hard drives died yesterday, coming home to a broken computer isnt fun, had to reinstall the os and order a new drive,

anyways, lets go over the basics
each drive has a Master boot record, a boot loader, and then an OS,
the master boot record tells it where the bootloader is, and the bootloader loads the operationg system,

now the bios checks the boot records of the drives installed in the system by boot order, defined in the systems bios configuration, now the problem you seem to be facing is that the addition of the CD rom/DVD drive has changed the order of the drives,

the first thing you should do is change the boot order in the bios to make sure the master boot record of the drive you want to boot is in the list, usualy having a DVD or CD drive before it is ok since its sometimes needed to load an OS and once it dosnt find a bootable CD or DVD here, it will skip to the next,

but your main problem is that if the order of the drives has changed, then the information in the master boot record is false, its pointing to a wrong leocation for the OS bootloader, you can try to fix that editing the boot.ini or using the fixmbr command from the windows repair console (usualy accesed by booting from your Windows DVD/CD and then choosing to repair an instalation), or you can play around with the cables changing the order of the drives so the information in the MBR is correct,

btw, how are the drives set up ?
IDE ? SATA ?

 

[Duggo]

one of my hard drives died yesterday, coming home to a broken computer isnt fun, had to reinstall the os and order a new drive,

anyways, lets go over the basics
each drive has a Master boot record, a boot loader, and then an OS,
the master boot record tells it where the bootloader is, and the bootloader loads the operationg system,

now the bios checks the boot records of the drives installed in the system by boot order, defined in the systems bios configuration, now the problem you seem to be facing is that the addition of the CD rom/DVD drive has changed the order of the drives,

the first thing you should do is change the boot order in the bios to make sure the master boot record of the drive you want to boot is in the list, usualy having a DVD or CD drive before it is ok since its sometimes needed to load an OS and once it dosnt find a bootable CD or DVD here, it will skip to the next,

but your main problem is that if the order of the drives has changed, then the information in the master boot record is false, its pointing to a wrong leocation for the OS bootloader, you can try to fix that editing the boot.ini or using the fixmbr command from the windows repair console (usualy accesed by booting from your Windows DVD/CD and then choosing to repair an instalation), or you can play around with the cables changing the order of the drives so the information in the MBR is correct,

btw, how are the drives set up ?
IDE ? SATA ?

According to who, Me or the BIOS? "Under the hood" you can see them connected via an IDE cable. In the BIOS everything, and I do mean everything, is listed either PATA or SATA (with the exception of the Floppy Disk Drive.)

The root of my computer ills, was loose IDE connections to the two drives, and the drive I turned on, because the text in the BIOS said the default position for the drive from the factory was on, had to be turned off. Like it was in the first place.

Now it's running nicely.

The abbreviation - "PATA" always makes me laugh, because pata in Spanish is the word for "paw," (like of a dog, for example) if I'm not mistaken.

 

[quixand]

PATA = IDE
or rather, IDE is the type of cable, while PATA is the connection protocol (Parallel ATA, as opposed to SATA being Serial ATA, the difference being that parallel connections can have up to 2 devices per motherboard connector and serial connections handle 1 device per connector. SATA is much faster however, and the cables are smaller, which makes everything a lot nicer inside a computer case).
At least for SATA the name's the same for the connection protocol and the cable... Makes things less fuzzy.