XP x64 and optical drives

[hp]

Is there a setting in windows Xp x64 that chooses to turn off the
optical drives at any time??

I can boot my PC and have the use of the optical drives (CD, and DVD)
but if I go away from the PC and return later, (usually after the PC has
shut down the monitor (timed out)) the opticals might still be there, or
not.
Lost in windows explorer, and in other programs that might stand a
chance of looking at them.

thanks!

 

[Paul]

Is there a setting in windows Xp x64 that chooses to turn off the
optical drives at any time??

I can boot my PC and have the use of the optical drives (CD, and DVD)
but if I go away from the PC and return later, (usually after the PC has
shut down the monitor (timed out)) the opticals might still be there, or
not.
Lost in windows explorer, and in other programs that might stand a
chance of looking at them.

thanks!

I'm not aware of anything on the IDE bus (ribbon cable
drives).

SATA has HIPM/DIPM for link power state management.
But the dialog showing here, only seems to apply to
hard drives. I don't know if optical drives happen
to get treated the same way or not. You would
think link power management would be the same
for both of them.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/177819-ahci-link-power-management-enable-hipm-dipm.html

That article is for Windows 7, but if you happened to be
using an AHCI driver in WinXP, the same features
might be present.

So that's a long shot.

Any power saving features that happened to be inside
an HDD or ODD, aren't likely to be nearly as much
of an issue. As a "sleeping thing", if the bus is
working, you can wake it by giving it a poke. It's when
the bus has sleeping states, that poorly coded drivers
may attempt to poke something, where the I/O path isn't
working (sleeping).

Also of note, is that "insane" SATA drives, are not
guaranteed recoverable. Twice now, I've had SATA hard
drives have some kind of issue with their controller
board. If I attempt to just "warm reboot" the system,
or even press the reset button, I cannot recover
communications with the disk. But if I power off and
power on, it comes back no problem, and no bad
sectors. The reason this happens, is on the IDE bus,
there is an actual "reset" signal, which snaps all the
hardware back into line. On SATA, there is no reset,
and if a controller board goes nuts, it must be power
cycled, worst case, to bring it back.

Paul

 

[John Doe]

Also of note, is that "insane" SATA drives, are not
guaranteed recoverable. Twice now, I've had SATA hard
drives have some kind of issue with their controller
board. If I attempt to just "warm reboot" the system,
or even press the reset button, I cannot recover
communications with the disk. But if I power off and
power on, it comes back no problem, and no bad
sectors. The reason this happens, is on the IDE bus,
there is an actual "reset" signal, which snaps all the
hardware back into line. On SATA, there is no reset,
and if a controller board goes nuts, it must be power
cycled, worst case, to bring it back.

Seems something like that happens here with my SSD drives.

 

[hp]

I'm not aware of anything on the IDE bus (ribbon cable drives).

SATA has HIPM/DIPM for link power state management. But the dialog
showing here, only seems to apply to hard drives. I don't know if
optical drives happen to get treated the same way or not. You would
think link power management would be the same for both of them.

That article is for Windows 7, but if you happened to be using an

AHCI driver in WinXP, the same features might be present.

So that's a long shot.

Any power saving features that happened to be inside an HDD or ODD,
aren't likely to be nearly as much of an issue. As a "sleeping
thing", if the bus is working, you can wake it by giving it a poke.
It's when the bus has sleeping states, that poorly coded drivers may
attempt to poke something, where the I/O path isn't working
(sleeping).

Also of note, is that "insane" SATA drives, are not guaranteed
recoverable. Twice now, I've had SATA hard drives have some kind of
issue with their controller board. If I attempt to just "warm
reboot" the system, or even press the reset button, I cannot recover
communications with the disk. But if I power off and power on, it
comes back no problem, and no bad sectors. The reason this happens,
is on the IDE bus, there is an actual "reset" signal, which snaps
all the hardware back into line. On SATA, there is no reset, and if
a controller board goes nuts, it must be power cycled, worst case,
to bring it back.

Paul

I see I was just a touch brief in my info, The opticals are on
the motherboards single IDE connector. They seem to totally disappear
from windows when they 'go by-by'. Usually they are seen and 'activated'
on a boot.

I think the MB just predates AHCI, I seem to recall exploring AHCI but
not seeing anything that allowed me to use it if I had it. So I don't
even recall ever trying that at all (yet).

But eventually they disappear over time, a day, less then a day, over
night, several days, its hard to pin the event down that seems to be
causing the problems. Once 'gone' windows explorer doesn't 'see' them,
nor does any other software that is used in windows to access the
optical drives.

Otherwise I have no clues there is anything else that's amiss with my
setup. Just the vanishing act the CD/DVD drives pull.

I usually run several applications that wants the PC to be left on 24/7
so the only power setting I can find is only controlling the monitor,
and not set for any other actions.

 

[Paul]

I see I was just a touch brief in my info, The opticals are on
the motherboards single IDE connector. They seem to totally disappear
from windows when they 'go by-by'. Usually they are seen and 'activated'
on a boot.

I think the MB just predates AHCI, I seem to recall exploring AHCI but
not seeing anything that allowed me to use it if I had it. So I don't
even recall ever trying that at all (yet).

But eventually they disappear over time, a day, less then a day, over
night, several days, its hard to pin the event down that seems to be
causing the problems. Once 'gone' windows explorer doesn't 'see' them,
nor does any other software that is used in windows to access the
optical drives.

Otherwise I have no clues there is anything else that's amiss with my
setup. Just the vanishing act the CD/DVD drives pull.

I usually run several applications that wants the PC to be left on 24/7
so the only power setting I can find is only controlling the monitor,
and not set for any other actions.

The great Google sez, in summary:

1) Check jumpers. If two drives are present, you could
set the drive on the end to Master, the drive in the
middle to slave.

2) If there are two drive devices present, reduce the problem
to one drive. Like, place the optical drive on the end connector
as master. Just in case it is an interaction of some sort, between
the two IDE devices sharing the bus.

I haven't seen a post for flaky hardware yet (the drive itself
is disappearing because the chipset in the drive crashed), but I suppose
that is possible. But the thing is, when people test for the disappearing
drive problem, and insert another drive, that doesn't fix it. The
new drive disappears as well. Suggesting the drive itself is not
involved.

Another factor, is the introduction of "Virtual CD" software
into the system. That interferes with optical drive burning.
I had a problem like that, which was so severe, the burning
process would lock up the optical drive (the burner software
is actually talking to the virtual CD software). Sometimes,
a virtual CD capability comes with burner software (you install Nero,
and get the ability to mount ISO files as virtual CD drives).
So check to see if you recently added CD/DVD burning software,
or CD/DVD data recovery software of some sort. It could be
an added "feature".

Paul

 

[hp]

That article is for Windows 7, but if you happened to be using an
---------------------------------------------------

I see I was just a touch brief in my info, The opticals are on
the motherboards single IDE connector. They seem to totally disappear
from windows when they 'go by-by'. Usually they are seen and 'activated'
on a boot.

I think the MB just predates AHCI, I seem to recall exploring AHCI but
not seeing anything that allowed me to use it if I had it. So I don't
even recall ever trying that at all (yet).

But eventually they disappear over time, a day, less then a day, over
night, several days, its hard to pin the event down that seems to be
causing the problems. Once 'gone' windows explorer doesn't 'see' them,
nor does any other software that is used in windows to access the
optical drives.

Otherwise I have no clues there is anything else that's amiss with my
setup. Just the vanishing act the CD/DVD drives pull.

I usually run several applications that wants the PC to be left on 24/7
so the only power setting I can find is only controlling the monitor,
and not set for any other actions.

Followup: had a hardware fault that killed the internet for 4 days.
So, I wiped the HD in the offending PC and started a fresh install
of win XP X64. Once everything was reloaded/re-installed I have been
'testing', so far the opticals that were pulling the 'Houdini act'
have been stable running now for 7 days of 24/7 on time.