strange question.

About a yr ago I bought an internal DVD drive for a computer thats kind of old.
I hooked it up and the DVD drive worked perfectly. The only thing was, the original drive that came with the comp. stopped working when I installed the DVD drive.
I tried fiddling around with it but i couldn't get both of them to work at the same time...only one of them. They both still worked but not at the same time.. is there a way i can have them both work at the same time?

Thanks.

 

If they are on the same IDE cable, make sure you set the jumpers properly. One of them has to be master, the other needs to be set as a slave (again, if they are on the same cable).

E

 

I tried that, i set the original drive as the master and that DVD as the slave (on the same cable), didnt work.. windows wouldnt load past the start screen. Then, I tried it the other way around with DVD as the master and the original as the slave (on the same cable) same problem. I couldnt get windows to load if i had them both connected.. only one and it would work.

Thanks anyway Fred!

Edit: sorry im not that smart, whats a jumper? is it that long thing thats sorta white attached to the cable?

 

"... i set the original drive as the master and that DVD as the slave..."

The jumpers are what you physically set on the drive(s) to Master, Slave, or Cable Select.

If you set your drives as stated above, and don't know what a jumper is, then you must have been going by the drive placement on the IDE cable. To use them this way, the physical jumper has to be set to CS, and you must use an 80 conductor/40 pin cable. (EIDE cable shown below.)

Below is a typical (Western Digital) 10 pin jumper configuration. These jumpers are (generally) at the rear of the drives, near the data/power cable connectors. (Just click on the image to enlarge.) They're basically just small/little rectangular "caps" which slide onto any two pins. (Smaller than an Aspirin pill.) They can be black, white, green, blue, colour doesn't matter. They're an electrical connection.

 

yes!! Dan that picture of the gray thing is what i used to connect the drives (cept mine is an offish white kinda cream colored AND grey i think with one labeled master and the other slave) when i get home i'll look for the jumpers and if i find them and move them to cable select, then both drives will work, no?

 

theoredically.... yes

 

If all your hardware is OK (functional), and your cable is 80 conductor, things should go smoothly.

 

dyamond,

There's a good picture of drive jumpers shown in this posting;

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=129372

(It's a hard disk which is shown, but it's essentially the same.)