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How Many DVD's in a PC - Can There be Only One?

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5 replies

by briancatt

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Hi. Am technnical but not at PC geek sysadmin level. Can Flash Bios, change hardware, follow instructions, not be stupid, etc.

Son's gaming computer CD failed so I wondered if I could replace it with a DVD ROM (an old Samsung SD-616 from a Compaq PC).

I plugged it up but its not seen by the BIOS.

Computer is a home build ASUS K8N-E DeLuxe Mother Board running Windows XP.

Can there be only one DVD or should it have worked and just been see by Windows? I downloaded the firmware code for the Presario it used to go in but have done nothing with it.

Suggestions. Should I be able to run a DVD R/W and DVD ROM together?

If YES what may be the problem and ideally the solution?

Thanks,

Brian Catt

5 replies

by slayer_

I assume its IDE? Make sure its plugged in the exact same way the CD drive was and you should not have a problem. Make sure the jumpers were set the same as well, be it, primary, secondary, or cable select (CS).
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT83F8wLtubrIF8ieCBrGmUMLcwLYzLkJTBjNM5KPf6vC5auFfeFw&t=1 Here is a picture for you.

Some IDE cables didn't actually support multiple drives on the same cable, it just simply wouldn't work, I have no idea why. Replacing the cable has fixed several of my older computers back in the day.

However, if this is a SATA drive, it should have just worked...

by briancatt

IDE. Thankyou. Will try this and the other help. May be a while as other skies are falling...

by oh smeg

As suggested above. If there is more than one Drive on that IDE Data Lead you'll need to set the Jumper to what the other drive isn't.

So if the Other drive is Master you'll need to set the DVD Drive to Slave. While Cable Select CS may work this depends on the Data Lead as some of the older IDE Data Leads do not support the CS option so you need to set it to Master or Slave.

With any IDE Data Lead it can support up to a Maximum of 2 Drives per Data Lead. This can be 2 X IDE HDD or Optical Drives or a Mix of both.

But you need to have the Jumpers set to a different value and with the newest Data leads the Middle connector should be set to Slave and the one on the End should be set to Master.

If you have not set the jumper correctly the drive will not show in the BIOS and you'll need to change the Jumper Setting.

Col

by briancatt

Thankyou. Will try this and the other help. May be a while as other skies are falling...

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