Hi all,

I have a Pioneer 212D DVD-RW SATA 18x. It's in my custom-built beast of a computer that I bought a month ago. The drive is plugged into the SATA II port on my ASUS Commando motherboard, using a y-cable with my hard-drive for port 1 and 2. I am running Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit.

I had the PC custom built by an OEM distributor, so most things were up and running when it arrived (saved me a weekend of installing stuff). The only problem I have is the DVD-RW drive keeps getting "Read-Failure" errors intermittently. The following has occurred:

1. I put in a CD into the drive (could be a driver disk to install something) and nothing happens. The light doesn't come on and all I hear is a clicking sound, like the head is moving but the disk is not spinning.
2. If I eject the disk by pressing the button with my finger, and try again, the disk reads ok as though nothing happens. It doesn't appear to be reading at the fastest speed and seems to be in go-slow mode. But at least it works.
3. I try to rip some music using Easy CD-DA Extractor. This really shows the problem. Either nothing happens at all (like problem 1), or it rips the first couple of tracks at lightening speed, then stops and thinks about it while the hard-drive is thrashing away. Then it goes into go-slow mode for a few more tracks. A minute or so later it stops, with the hard-drive light fully on, but with the DVD-RW light off. Clicking noise again!
4: (rarely) Work as though there is nothing wrong.

Is this a software or hardware problem? Could it be the SATA II controller is overloaded or something? I have searched for issues with Windows Vista and applied a number of fixes - including updating the registry and try re-installing the drive. But they don't work.

Should I remove the y-cable and get the hard-drive working on port 1 and the DVD-RW on port 3 to be sure? I thought these types of SATA cables can handle two devices ok. I've never had a SATA drive before (too many years using laptops). Could this y-cable be inadvertently sharing only 1 port so that the drives are competiting with each other?

I hope it isn't the hardware. In my experience hardware usually works or it doesn't. It seems really strange that it can work like a dream one minute, but then stop the next.

Help!

there are sata y POWER cables

you shouldn't share power

what sata controller are you using for the dvd burner

I tried to figure out how to identify the controller I was using, but all I can tell is that the DVDR drive is plugged into Channel 1 of the SATA controller in Device Manager. When I opened the case, it was plugged into the port (Secondary Master). So I moved it to port 3 (Primary Slave), to see if that made any difference. I also checked the power cables and confirmed that they are not being shared by any other device.

While I was at it, I updated the firmware to version 1.21. Now this should have helped matters, but unfortunately it has made them worse.

Now the drive doesn't work at all in Windows Vista. It can only open and close the tray, and can't read any CDROMs or DVDs. I didn't try burning anything because I do that so rarely I don't really care if that works or not at the moment. What I need is a DVD drive that can rip cds and install software.

So I pulled out my trusty Windows XP Emergency Boot CD from my old computer and gave it a whirl. And funny enough the drive works perfectly booting using the BIOS and the cut-down windows XP command line system. So I know the hardware works (and quite well too).

So this appears to be a Windows Vista problem!

Now what? I suppose I will have to log it with Microsoft and go through the pain of not having a DVD drive to use. I suppose I can work around it. I'm so glad I kept my old laptop, so as a last resort I can connect to it's DVDR drive over the wireless network.

Any other comments?

another one of these durn intel 965 w/jmicron controller

the dvd burner should be hooked to the ich8 sata connectors and they should be set for ide mode in bios not raid

looks like(from your manual) 1,2,5,6 are master mode sata with 3 and 4 reserved for slave mode?????????