BleepingComputer.com: Sata DVD burner will not be recognized by VIA card!!

Okay so realizing i needed a new DVD drive i went out to bestbuy and bought a HP lightscribe 1270 burner.
All excited, i get home and hook everything up and hook up the sata cable to the sata port on my VIA PCI card!
For some reason my computer will NOT recognize my drive.
I have a program called JungleFlasher that i used to flash my xbox drive with and it recognized my dvd drive on that program but windows will not. exOdus ( a member of the bleeping computers community) helped me troubleshoot this for about 3 straight hours. He suggested i post the problem on here and see what feedback i get.
Any and all help i get is much appreciated! I know this can work with a little bit of expertise, but a person that is completely ignorant and lacks all the know how to get this down will not....well, get it done without a little guidance. I dont know if this is a BIOS problem but im sure you guys do, being the very intelligent people that you are!

Thanks in advance!

Holli.

Good morning Holli,

I think the best recommendation I can give you is to take back the DVD drive you purchased, purchase a DVD burner or drive with an IDE interface and replace the CD drive you currently have in the machine with it. This will likely save you the time and frustration of troubleshooting this any further. The XBOX drive is already flashed but if you think there will be a need to do it again in the future then we can continue troubleshooting the current issue.


Not much earlier I was helping you with this. I can't really sleep so here we are again. For anyone who gets back to Holli before I can make any further suggestions, here's a quick overview:

• Windows does detect the VIA VT6421 PCI SATA Controller Card which does have RAID control functionality but does recognize ATAPI devices unlike your typical RAID controller
• The DVD drive is detectable through Jungle Flasher. Not sure why this app can detect it but Windows can't
• The drivers for the VIA SATA card are current
• There is another IDE CD drive present on the system

Do you have any CD/DVD tools installed on your machine such as Roxio Creator, Daemon Tools, Nero or any other applications that you are aware of?

This post has been edited by ex0dus: 17 January 2011 - 06:11 AM

Never depend on a SATA card to work with an optical drive. It is a completely hit or miss proposition, usually a miss. The cards generally work fine with hard drives, as they were meant to. Its the same thing as trying to hook up that optical drive to the non native SATA ports on a motherboard.

Agree with above. Get a PATA/IDE optical drive and save the hassle.

I do have nero 9 essentials on it, and imgburn. Thats it!
Its just the best buy i went to is fairly far away as i only went because it was on the way back from a rather long
trip i took Friday, its about 3 hours away from here..
and the only other best buy near my area is approximately an hour and a half away!
So i thought that with the help of you guys i could get this a wrap!

Can you turn the "RAID" functionality off on your Via Card?

If i could, i would not know how to!
It would be very useful though i must say as
that is what is probably keeping my drive invisible!

Wait cant you go into BIOS and turn raid mode off?

Upon booting your computer do you see the VIA Raid Controller BIOS flash one the screen with a message similar to "press CTRL-A to enter raid bios"?

I have not kept an eye out for that, allow me to attempt and get back with you!

No i do not get that option.
I just get the option, to go into IBM BIOS menu.

I was afraid of that
Your SATA controller is made for RAID only
and most likely will never recognize your SATA DVD
Plus....
the VT6421 is a very old card from 2007
This is going to give you 2 choices
1. Replace your DVD drive with an IDE drive
2. Replace the SATA controller with one that is NOT Raid

Holli,

I'd go for buying a newer SATA controller card. Don't purchase one from eBay though. Find a reputable e-tailer like Newegg or Tigerdirect which will give you a thorough description of what the controller is capable of. Be sure to purchase one that can recognize ATAPI SATA optical drives. If you aren't comfortable deciding on an item by yourself, just let me know which one you've got your eye on and post a link to it here. I'll let you know if that item will work with your DVD drive or not.