Trouble with Drives?

[jet.]

I had a Samsung SC-152A CD-ROM drive as a master to a Samsung SM-348 Combo drive and everything was working fine until one day the drive wasn't detecting any cd's due to PIO being enabled and being unable to change back to Auto-DMA, multi-word DMA was the only other alternative which still had the same effect...

Anyway i purchased a NEC 2500 DVD Rewriter in the hope to get myself two drives again. It worked for a few weeks and then suddenly the same scenario had happened, where the drive doesn't detect any cd's whether it be blank or not? I RMA'ed, got the new drive and AGAIN, a few weeks and it just stops detecting cd's like the original Samsung? InfoTool shows the drive is still on Auto-DMA, but like the Samsung on the secondary master channel, the NEC has now caught the problem? I didn't firmware with the replaced NEC, i haven't did anything in the manner of changing drivers, reinstalling OS or anything major, i've tried other IDE cables, installed newer version of the IDE controller and tried primary/secondary to master or slave with the correct jumper settings.

What is going on?

[G]

I will try to find a solution but in the meantime - up it goes.

[Direct1]

It could be the IDE channel they are connected to is failing? Can you move it to the primary IDE channel as slave to your HDD and test it?

Good luck! :D

[jet.]

I've did all of that, i think i've tried everything, lol but still no luck... this is the second RMA now, fingers crossed. I'm wondering how many times my stockist is going to take the drive back. :p

[G]

What happens if you use the NEC as primary and no secondary optical drive is connected? Does the problem eventually arise?

This is definitely strange but it cannot be due to the optical drives as different manufacturers optical drives are failing.

It may be a dodgy power connecter and the give away will be if it is the same connector or one on the same power line.

[jet.]

Well, when i get the drive back i'll certainly look into it G. Thanks, i'll keep you posted. :)

[jet.]

Got it back today and reinstalled it and everything is working fine. For some reason though it's also fixed my boot time as it has decreased by half (takes only 8 cycles now as apposed to the 15 cycles i had before). How odd, i've rebooted to test it and yep, it's decreased by half. All good, thanks again. :)

[G]

Fingers crossed ah! :D

[jet.]

Oh dear, my other drive (the 2nd Samsung!) has changed to PIO and i can't seem to swap it back to DMA! OH POOSTIX!

Edit: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817472


Sorted! :cool:

[G]

:)