DVD drive partially functional; could IDE controller help?

[jlshelton]

I am having trouble with getting two different DVD burners working: the Sony DRU-500A and the HP DVD-300i. Neither one seems to work successfully when attached as Master or Slave on the PC's motherboard IDE controller. In both cases, it can take the drive up to a minute to recognize new media (even CD-ROMs). I've swapped out cables. I've gotten one unit factory serviced. Both have current firmware.

Both HP and Sony drives use no custom drivers; Win2K built-in driver is specified, so I haven't tried changing drivers.

Would there be any advantage or drawback to adding a PCI bus IDE/ATAPI controller and trying to run one or both DVD drives off of the new controller? I'm running out of options for things to swap out, and don't want to change MOBOs.

 

[kestrel1]

I don't think that a PCI IDE controller would make any difference, unless your mobo is very old.
How old is your mobo & do you have the latest drivers for your mobo's chipset ect.

 

[KimLeece]

Actually I have to disagree with kestrel1. I just had a very similar problem with two DVD's (one reader - one witer) The writer installed as slave to the C: drive wouldn't work. The two DVD's installed as master and slave on the 2nd channel both came up - but with problems playing DVD's fromm the writer. I bought a new IDE two channel card and installed everything on it's own channel as master - immediately finished with any problems! I have even added back a fast CDR reader on the spare channel - everything works fine - and it's fast. I would sy it's definately worth a shot - the cards aren't too expensive anyway - especially compared to the DVD's I trashed trying to get it to work!!

Kim.

'Everybody is ignorant - only on different subjects.'
Will Rogers.

 

[Freestone]

Is DMA mode enabled in Device Manager for affected IDE channels?

 

[jlshelton]

Yes, Ultra DMA mode is enabled on all channels.
Unlikely I need a Mobo firmware upgrade; all used to work well....

 

[kestrel1]

I wasn't thinking of a BIOS upgrade just the Windows drivers for the motherboard. These should be available from the manufacturers website.
If you have DMA enabled, disable it to see if that makes any difference. If not get a PCI IDE card.

 

[garebo]

The pci ide card will do it for you, there is no question of that, specially if you put one of them on the new pci ide and leave the other on the mobos built in ide channel. Ideally, both should be set as master but you likely know that part already.