2 cd drives won't work on a gateway

[Return2Sender]

I have an open spot on an IDE cable and wated to hook up both a cd rom and a cr rw drive. I set the cdrw on master and the cd rom on slave..neither shows up in windows xp pro.. if I reverse the slave/master settings..neither shows up. put both on cable select..neither shows up. unplug one drive and the other one works great. how do I make both drives work and show up?

the specs for my motherboard are here:

http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/INTEL/4000510/400051002.shtml


it's a Jabril BX Motherboard R1...TIA

 

[XtR-X]

At the end of the IDE cable, this is usually the master device. In the middle (between the beginning and end) this device is usually the slave. First take that in mind.

Then, on the back of each cd drive, there is a jumper you need to move in order to specify what the drive is. The one at the end of the cable should be set to master, and the one in the middle of the cable should be set to slave.

Hope that helps.

 

[Return2Sender]

Yes, I've already had the drives hooked up that way. It seems whenever both drives are plugged into the same IDE cable..neither will show up..or work. unplug either drive and the one still plugged in works perfectly. thanks for you advice though.

 

[poertner_1274]

Generally it isn't good to have the cd and cdrw drives on the same cable, if you are going to be doing cd to cd copying. Data will only be sent at about half the speed because it cannot communicate both ways on the ribbon at the same time.

I would suggest putting one drive with a HD on one cable, then put the other with another HD(if you have one) on the other cable.

Try this and post back whether it works or not.

 

[Return2Sender]

Thanks. I'll give that a try. I had thought about trying that but wasn't sure if It would mess something up having the cd drive on the same cable as my only HD. Thanks again..I'll let you know if it works.

 

[Nic]

Try attaching only one drive, then asigning a different drive letter in windows. Once you've done this, then attach the second drive also. Hopefully both will now be visible. If that doesn't work, then maybe those two drives just don't get along.

PS: Before I forget. Does your startup screen show that both drives are being detected by the bios? I assume that is happening correctly, otherwise these two drives are just not getting along with each other.

 

[XtR-X]

Return2Sender, have you tried moving the jumpers on the back of the CD drive? See my earlier post. You will have problems if both are master/slave/etc. One jumper needs to be set to the master position, and the other jumper needs to be set to the slave position.

Or, what possibly might be happening, is that your hard drive is the master on one IDE cable already, and you added a CD drive and tried to set it as master. Etc.

 

[novicegamer]

are you sure your using an 80 wire cable

 

[Return2Sender]

the jumpers are set right. however I did check to see what was happening at boot up and when both drives are plugged in..the bios isn't seeing either of them. the hard drive boots up but no cd roms at all. I tried to upgrade my bios and it won't let me..says something about a "memory..." I can't remember. I want to say Memory master but I know that's not right. It escapes me right now. it was almost like it was saying the memory was locked so it couldn't do a bios upgrade. I think I'm just gonna buy a new computer. lol thanks to everyone for your help. this is a great forum and I'm glad I found it.

 

[Return2Sender]

oh..I forgot. I was going to try the second Cd rom on the cable with the hard drive. cd rom being the slave but the cable was too short to reach so I said ta heck with it...once again thank you everyone!