MSI Mobo doesn't detect HP SATA optical drive

[JoshWes]

Hi all,

I've looked all over the internet, contacted HP, and updated my Mobo BIOS, but to no avail. I have an HP Lightscribe DVD1070i optical drive that has one Serial ATA data connection, and one Serial ATA power connection. There are no jumpers for Master or Slave. I have an MSI K9N2G Neo Mobo with BIOS version 1.20. It is not detecting my SATA optical drive, but it is detecting my SATA HDD. The optical drive i have right now is an IDE drive which I would like to move to my secondary Desktop, but can't because it would leave my Main without a working Optical Drive. I was told by HP to install SATA controllers but I can't find anything like that for my Mobo on the internet. The MSI Live Update program doesn't even find anything for me. So, is there anyone who can help me with my dilemma?

~Josh

 

[JoshWes]

If it helps, HP has told me to connect my SATA drive to another computer, but I can't because there are all too old and don't use SATA.

 

[EXCellR8]

if you can't find any SATA controller drivers for your motherboard, then you might want to try assigning a generic driver to the device. you can do this by rolling the driver back or looking for a microsoft driver online. if the new optical drive came with a cd-rom, you can copy the contents using the old drive and then do a search for a driver in the files now copied to the hard drive.

there is also the possibility of the SATA port being disabled in BIOS, in which case you would want to enable that. a lot of motherboards feature two or more SATA controllers, so one may be disabled without you knowing.

 

[luvhuffer]

The SATA drivers are included in the nVidia system driver package that can be downloaded here. Just click on the appropriate operating system. I personally don't recommend anyone using these automatic updating apps done in Windows. Any system hick-up during the update can create serious problems especially BIOS updates though that's not an issue here. Have you tried different sata connectors on the board?

 

[JoshWes]

I went into "Add Hardware" and tried selecting "Generic Device;" however, it said there were no devices detected.

The problem with rolling back the driver is that would require windows to detect my drive. If windows does not detect my drive, it is not listed in the device manager. If it is not in the device manager, then I cannot roll back, update, or uninstall it because it does not exist. And there was no CD-ROM that came with the drive.

I looked through the BIOS and it has all 4 of the SATA ports listed, but they all say "Not Detected" aside from the one my HDD is on. I checked the settings on each port and they are all enabled.

Would it make a difference if my optical drive was on SATA port 4 instead of 2?

 

[luvhuffer]

Like EXCellR8 said on some boards the SATA driver thing is kind of whack. Like for instance an Intel chipset might support 2 SATA ports and the other 4 are on a novell controller. I'm sorry but I'm not sure how the set up is with the nVidia chipset on that mobo but i think 1 driver runs them all. And yes you may just have a bad connector so try with it plugged into different ones.

 

[raybay]

Replace your SATA cables. It amazes me how often the SATA connect problem is fixed with simple cheap cable replacements.

 

[luvhuffer]

Ya I hate those SATA connectors without the little locking clips.

 

[JoshWes]

My SATA connector has those locking clips.

Thanks for all the suggestions; I'll try 'em as soon as I get home.

~Josh

 

[JoshWes]

Found the problem! My Mobo has 6 SATA ports; 1-4 are for regular connections, 5 and 6 are for RAID. I had the drive in a RAID port. Windows is picking up my drive and it's working just fine.

 

[raybay]

Good to know. Thanks for the follow up report.