IDE troubles

Hey everyone!

I recently added a second hard drive to my desktop as extra storage. Now I am having weird problems with the DVD+-RW drive. The original configuration is a WD SATA hard drive and a Pioneer DVD111D IDE. Everything peachy.

I added a Maxtor IDE hard drive to the mix. My mother board has 2 IDE spots as well. The DVD drive is on one and the new Maxtor HDD is on the other.

In order to get the new Maxtor to be seen I had to install the software that came with it. No problem, it can now be seen, all is well.

The next day I want to put some files onto a dvd using the simple drag and drop windows write to disk method, and each time it says "error transferring files". 'SOME' CDs will show their icon when inserted but will not play or even autoplay, some do.

I updated the firmware for the DVD drive just in case and that still did not work. Everything was fine until I added this new HDD. Could their possibly be a conflict with the 2 IDE positions on the motherboard?

I have tried moving them around, and even messing around with jumper settings. Nothing, any ideas?

 

Actually I think this is your problem. You should not need to install software in order for your hard drive to be seen.
What was the software?
What is your operating system
What are you essential hardware specs including approx date?

Welcome to Major Geeks.

 

Hey there. Thats what I had thought originally, but the new HDD was not showing up at all on Windows. So I ran that software and it worked. OK so anyways here is the answers:

The software was MaxBlast 4, which came with the new drive.
OS is Windows XP Home w/SP2.
Intel Pentium 4 3.00Ghz 1GB of RAM

hope this helps

 

How big are the hard drives?

 

The one that was there first the WD is a 250GB and the new one is a 200GB.

 

OK so your hardware is modern enough to be unaffected by hard drive size limits.

That being the case all that is necessary once you have connected a new IDE device is to detect it in the BIOS. Windows will then 'see' the drive and allow you to partition and format it.

There is a type of software, called dynamic drive overlay, which gets around the problem of drives being bigger than the system can cope with.

Seagate supply hard drives with a cd that can boot the pc, partition and format their drives without Windows running. I don't know if MAXBlast is overlay or the Seagate sort. How and where did you install it?

I think your problems occur because of a difference between what the bios is reporting to windows about the IDE and what maxblast is reporting.

 

The MaxBlast was installed to the original HDD (C drive). It seems to be like the Seagate software. IT can format, partition the new drive as well as be used to boot.

The BIOS does see all the drives, and it does show the correct order of Slave and Masters. Not to mention I am running two separate IDE cables, one for the DVD and one for the new HDD.

I have even spent hours moving around the jumpers on both drives with no luck.
As another odd thing, if I remove the IDE cable from the new HDD altogether and just run my system the way it was originally, the DVD drive still gives me all the same errors.

 

How is it used to boot?
Something with that capability has surely changed things?
The Seagate boots from the CD

So uninstall the maxblast

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

 

Hey again, thanks for all your help.

I did uninstall MaxBlast and it unfortunately did nothing to help my DVD situation. The new drive works perfectly fine, its just now I am having all this trouble with the DVD drive. Which sometimes its no trouble at all, just mishaps performing certain tasks.

The only other thing I can think of is to either re-install Windows over again and see what it may/may not take care of, or run a dynamic update so I don't loose all my stuff.

 

Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the DVD software?

I have a panasonic DVD drive that pseems to loose some or all its capability every time I install new things to do with the drives.

You could also try running the system file checker

get your windows cd handy

start>run>typein

cmd

at the black screen which opens typein

sfc /scannow (enter) (note the double n )

 

No software came with the DVD drive, except for Nero, which I never installed anyways. I did download the newest firmware from Pioneer and it ran, but has not made any difference.

When I get home I will try the sequence you suggested.

It's just the most bizarre thing lol

 

Hey.

I ran it just like you said, it ran, took a long time but it did complete. Still did not take care of the problem. I was starting to lose my mind for a while too. I went as far as to remove the new HDD and go back to the old setup, and then a bunch of things were going wrong with just starting up the machine. So I found that one of the IDE cables was bad come to find out. Maybe with all the moving around I might have messed it up.

So I moved the new HDD closer to the DVD and chained them together with one IDE cable. Finally got my system to startup and all 3 drives were detected. Its still giving me the same errors for drag and dropping onto a dvd+r. But it DOES burn a DVD if I use Sony dvd architect. So, I figure at least I will just use software to burn DVDs if I need to.

Still a hassle sometimes, but if it works then it works that way. Thanks again though for all of your help, I do appreciate it a lot!!