BleepingComputer.com: My comp wont read dvd burner with second hard drive in. please help

Ok so I went to try and burn a dvd today. well a movie onto a dvd+r. I had burned music before using windows media player. I put in a second hard drive like 3 weeks ago. Today I went to burn the movie but it said no dvd burner recognized. I restarted comp still didnt read. Then i shutdown unplugged the second hard drive from the ribbon cable then it recognized the dvd burner. I would like to know why its doing this and how to get passed without unplugging the hard drive every time which might be bad for the hard drive.

So how can I get passed this problem?

This second drive...is it PATA?

Was it connected on same cable as the optical drive?

Is the optical drive on the end connector?

Are jumpers involved on both the hard drive and the optical drive? If so, are they set properly?

Louis

the hard drive is ATA/IDE the optical is at the beginning of the cable. the hard drive yes it does have jumpers and it is set as a slave. it looks like the optical has jumpers but i cant see what they are set to as the comp is running right now. The hard drive was connected on the same cable as the optical. it was on the connector right after the optical

What about the second hard drive?
How is it connected?
You gave us two out of three pieces to the puzzle.

If all drives are IDE what I typically do is jumper the hard drives to master/slave and put them on the primary IDE channel. Then jumper the cd to master and put it on the secondary.

the main drive is sata. its connected on a completely different cable. I went in to check the jumper on the optical and what do you know it was set to slave and not master. so i changed it to master and now it all works. next time ill do alittle research before posting. sorry guys for wasting your time. i got it all working now

You never waste our time.
Those jumpers can get you every time!

Always check them and never assume.

My experience with drives/optical drives on same cable...set the hard drive as the master, with optical as secondary...jumpers at Cable Select or appropriate Master/Slave. The end connection is the Master.

A better setup would be the optical on its own cable...otherwise the cable speed defaults to the slower of the two (possibly PIO mode) and the hard drive speed suffers.

On more recent systems (last 2/3 years) which have motherboard with only one IDE connector...the optical and the hard drive can be attached with no loss of speed for the hard drive. This is not true for older motherboards. The hard drive should be the end connection.

Louis

Thanks for your help. I have it running how it should now. havnt had any problems for acouple days. MODS you can close topic now if you so see fit