CD ROM Drives not showing up

When accessing my CD-ROM drive recently, I noticed both my CD-ROM and CDRW drives were not showing up in windows explorer or device manager (windows ME). My CD-ROM had power as I was able to place a CD in it. However, my CDRW was dead. Both of the drives are set to cable select. When I disconnnected the power and cable to the dead CDRW, my computer easily found the CD-ROM drive. Is this normal, that if one drive is dead (both sharing the same controller), the other drive will not work? or is there some other problem with the cable or controller?
I plan on installing a new CDRW, but wanted to check first to see if anything else could cause this issue.
Thanks for your help

 

In a word, yes. As I understand it, when more than one device is on a single bus, like 2 devices on a single ide channel, both must acknowledge system queries to have either one function.

The system looks for your cdrw as a master or slave on ide1, for example. since it is the master device, where is the slave device or vice versa. It's expecting two devices and only finding one.

Next I wonder if the "failing" device is on the end of the cable or on the center connector. The reason being is that if it is on the end, could it be a cable problem rather than a hardware failure?

If this is a new configuration of hardware or software, try setting the jumpers to master and slave and try it again. I'd hate to see good cd drives hit the dumpster without needing to.

Good luck

Alan

 

Thanks for the input. It was definitely the CD-RW. Dell's 3 year warrenty (which they no longer offer) will cover the replacement.

 

Hi Cjjh: how did you determine it was the drive??

 

hey martin121,
By process of elimination I determined the CDRW was dead. I connected another CDRW to the cable and it worked perfectly. I concluded the other drive was dead. It appears that since both CD drives are running from the same cable, if one goes bad, it effects the other from working.
Thanks

 

Good work. Happy to hear you have a replacement CDRW drive ready. Let me know it when you hook it up it is ok. Just trying to get knowledge of what to do when drive goes bad to make sure it is the drive, not cable or software, not to throw out a good drive.

Would be nice to have some kind of diagnostic software that reports status of drives when down.