DVD RW not recognised in BIOS

[Dev_t]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on tech-forums. I hope I am at the right place.

The problem I am facing is regarding my Sony DVD RW. I own a Compaq machine with the following config at present:
OS: Windows XP Professional SP2
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 524 3.06 GHz
RAM: Total 1280 MB (2 sticks; 1024 MB, 256 MB )
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8S661FXM-775
BIOS: Award S/w international, v F7a
HDD: Western Digital Caviar 250 GB
OD: Sony DVD RW AD-7240
Audio: Realtek AC'97

It came with an IDE HD and an IDE CD RW. After some time I installed the SATA DVD RW in one of the two SATA ports. Everything was working fine and I could boot from my DVD RW. Recently my IDE HD went kaput. I replaced it with a SATA HD (WD Caviar). I had to reinstall the OS in the new HD. At that time also I could boot from my DVD RW. But last week when I tried to install Linux by booting from a live DVD, I couldn't. The BIOS is not showing the DVD RW although its working fine in Windows after booting. I have removed my IDE HD and CD RW. Please help me out.

 

[-RockMan-]

Hopefully this qill put you back on the right tracks, with your default hdd that has xp on it make that Raid 1
Take you other DVD-RW drive and put it on raid 3, forgive me if thats wrong, but I dont have a picture to go by with your mobo.

Next, look at your bios IDE and raid configuration setup,if it ask you which mode you want, raid achi or ide...
Tell it you want ACHI mode and save your settings, let it do a normal restart, if your windows boot logo comes up great!
If not it will show you which partition you want to select, windows or linux ?

Let us know what happens later on.

 

[Dev_t]

Hi Mike, sorry I was away for a while,

with your default hdd that has xp on it make that Raid 1
Take you other DVD-RW drive and put it on raid 3, forgive me if thats wrong,

I don't think that you can put a optical drive and a hdd in raid. Anyways I still gave it a shot by changing my settings in BIOS to RAID for SATA. It still won't recognize the DVD-RW. Also it doesn't boot into Windows when put in SATA and gives BSOD.

I also tried the following steps:
SATA0 : DVD-RW
SATA1 : HDD
Since the HDD was working fine so i changed its cable with the one on DVD RW. Still it only recognized the HDD in the BIOS and DVD-RW worked fine only after booting.

Now I changed the ports, so the position becomes
SATA0 : HDD
SATA1 : ODD
This time it recognised DVD-RW and also booted from it with live CD in it. But it won't recognize the HDD when there is no bootable medium in the DVD-RW.

So I guess the cable is right but the port has gone wrong.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Yeah, Mike, what is it with RAID these days? You don't RAID a DVD-RW.

Did you set the Boot priority in BIOS?

 

[Dev_t]

well of course I set boot priority in BIOS...
the sequence is
CD ROM
HDD
USB-HDD

I also tried changing the cable positions. The connections are fine. I swapped the DVD RW and HDD cables. Still the BIOS won't recognize. Strange thing is that the BIOS is recognizing the device only on one SATA port (IDE MASTER 3 in BIOS). It won't recognize a perfectly fine working device on the second SATA port(IDE MASTER 2 in BIOS).
I also tried one more thing. I put my DVD RW on the port which is recognized in BIOS and booted an Ubuntu Live DVD through. Now my hard disc is on the second port and it was not recognized in BIOS. When I chose the option to install from the Live DVD it got stuck on the splash screen without showing any error. I was expecting it to say that no hard disk has been detected.
Its a strange problem. Is it possible that my port has gone bad????

 

[NevoraskiA]

Try powering the dvd drive with a molex connector that's the only one being used on the wire... like each separate set of wires coming off of the power supply normally have I think like 2 or 3 molex connectors on them... use strand that has nothing else plugged into it. I've heard of somebody once having an issue with powering a case fan and dvd drive on the same cable... could possibly be the issue here.

 

[-RockMan-]

Sorry mind, but I just now noticed his reply and I had other things on my mind at that time.
Also I dont know where your coming from with your reply, but I've seen setups or even experienced setups where you would have to tinker or manipulate a system to atleast recognize your drives if you got IDE and a mixture of raid.

Thats why I called it quits with ide hardware in the middle of 2010, too many hassles, and stuff gets ****ed up eventually in the system.