Problem adding second DVD drive in Vista

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mason
  • Start date Start date
M

Mason

Hi all-

I am running a Vista 64-bit machine that is set up as follows:

2x Seagate 250GB hard drives connected via SATA and running in IDE mode (non
RAID)
NEC DVD-RW connected via IDE

Everything was working fine, and I purchased a second DVD-RW (Samsung) to
add to my system. I daisy-chained it to the same IDE cable as the first DVD
drive. But after booting, I could not access the new drive. The nearest
support articles I found first instructed me to clear the upper range of
some filter in the registry, which didn't quite sound right since I was
adding a drive after I had everythihg working in Vista.

Deeper checking led me to believe that I need to adjust the jumper settings
on the drives, which were both set to master. I changed them both to CSEL.
Now Vista reports that I have 3 DVD drives. Trying to understand what the
jumpers should be is getting me nowhere since all the documentation I have
found refers to having a DVD daisy-chained off the hard disk ATA cable and
nothing about my configuration with hard disks on SATA and only two DVD
daisy-chained on IDE. Here are my questions:

1) What should my DVD jumpers be set at? master/slave or csel/csel or
master/csel?

2) Is there a performance concern between different jumper settings (as I
saw discussed for master/slave harddisk/dvd)?

3) How do I get Vista to reflect only 2 DVD drives, as that is what is on
the machine (I suspect question 1 solves this)?

Thanks very much for your assistance,
Mason
 
When you Daisy Chain with IDE one needs to be set to master and the other to
slave. Usualy there's only 2 hookups on an IDE Cable, but if you have more
then you need to set a 3rd to CSEL. I think that's the common Jumper setting
when using a Third Drive. I know using a Third Drive can cause conflicts,
even with Jumpers set right. With all the jumpers set to the same, it's
blowing your BIOS's Mind, that's why it now thinks you have 3 Drives. It's
trying to figure out why there's 2 set up as slave 3rd Drive and is assumong
you have the first (Maser) Hooked up somewhere else.
Does any of your DVD, CD drives have a SATA connector? If your M-Board has
enough SATA Plugs this would be the best way to go. Not to mention you get
much better transfer rates with SATA and allot less Headaches.
 
The original NEC DVD-Rw should be set as master. Your new
one should be set as slave. I just installed a additional player
and this setup worked fine. Go Luck.

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