HD LED blinks during CDROM access . Why?

[dusthazard]

Hello good peoples.
Problem One (most Important!):
I have a Creative 52x CDROM i picked up at walmart during 2001. Whenever it accesses the CD, my LED for the harddrive blinks. The LED blinks for the HDD, too.
Are there any solutions to make the CDROM stop blinking the HDD LED on the computer? My DVD drive doesn't do this when it's connected in the place of my Creative.
Current drives: CD-rw HP CDWriter 8100 Plus (MASTER), CREATIVE 52x (SLAVE). I never use that ol' DVD drive because it is the DVD-114 by Pioneer! Awful thing.

Problem Two:
If I do a CD to CD-R/W copy from the Creative to my HP Writer, It usually ends in failure. It seems that the creative just seems to stop during copy time. Could its seek time or initialization time just be low or something? The dreaded DVD-114 copys just fine. I hate switching them around! Any answers?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Didou]

Hi dusthazard, Welcome to the TechSpot Forums.

For the first part, it's normal for your HDD led to blink while CD Rom access. It's not really an HDD led, it's an IDE led so it's supposed to blink whenever there are IDE transfers occuring.

As for the second answer, we might need a little more info on your setup. What mainboard do you have, which OS, how are your HDDs setup ( Primary master, slave, etc ... ) ?

 

[dusthazard]

Oh, ok, great!

Thanks a lot!

Let's see:
PIII 500 Slot 1
ASUS P2B-VT motherboard, made oem for HP
Windows 98 SE clean installed
1st IDE Channel:
Maxtor 20Gb HDD as Master
nothing here
2nd IDE channel:
HP CDWriter 8100 Plus as Master
Creative 52x as Slave

Thanks for your help. If you need other specs, just say so!

 

[Vehementi]

What CD are you trying to copy? :suspiciou

It could be that the CD is copy protected. Such things are. Although it would be odd because it cancels in the middle of burning...odd...

 

[Didou]

Having the CD & the CD-RW on the same IDE bus isn't recommended ( unless you have a burnproof capable CD-RW ).

DATA has to be red from the CDRom, transfered to memory & then sent back to the CD-RW. As you can imagine, both can't be done at the same time so while DATA is being fetched from the CDROm, none is being sent to the CD-RW ( thus a buffer under-run most likely ) the same way that when DATA is being sent to the CD-RW, none is being fetched from the CDRom.

You can do an image of the CD you are trying to copy on your Hard drive & from there burn the image. Or you could install your CDRom as slave on the primary IDE bus & leave the CD-RW by itself on the second.

I don't understand how come it worked with your DVD Drive but not with your CDRom though.

BTW why don't you keep the DVD Drive ? It gives you more options then a simple 52x CDRom.

I remember having that same CDRom ( creative 52x ) & I really hated it. It took it 5 minutes to eject & sometimes 15 minutes to be able to read a simple CD. I got rid of it very quickly.:dead:

 

[dusthazard]

I would keep the DVD-114 if it would read a CDROM without clunking all the time. I assume the drive keeps reseting the heads or speeding down or something. Just a terrible drive when I'm trying to load and play cd games. Ugh.

I guess I'll just have to wait until I can afford on of those inexpensive liteon dvd drives.

Thanks for your help. Oh, and that's it, a buffer underun occurs. But, it doesn't happen with the dvd114. Oh, well. Thanks.