[Janis]

My CDRW quit so I bought a DVD Writer (ASUS). It is a SATA Drive, not the IDE I had before. I do have a DVD Writer on the second connection which is also IDE and it has never been a problem before. I connected the SATA drive making it the primary, replacing the CDRW. I checked the SATA connection on the motherboard (ABIT BH7) and it seems firm. The pc does not see the drive. Reading the BH7 manual, it says "To enable the SATA function, the SATA controller option in the BIOS must be set to enabled. By enabling this function, the total devices of what IDE2 channel could connect will then be reduced to one device instead of two" The only reference that I could find (PHOENIX BIOS) is under the second IDE controller and I chose enbabled. However than neither optical drives are seen or available. I want the new drive to be the primary optical as I want to boot from that drive and I don't have a choice in BIOS to make a CDRW and DVDwriter bootable. Any suggestions as to what to do next would be greatly appreciated.

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Hi Janis
Is this your MB at this link http://www.digital-d...board/abit-bh7/
Can I ask whether your HDD is the SATA or IDE type? The reason that I ask is because you should just be able to connect the SATA drive and it should simply work, but looking at the picture at the attached link the MB only has one IDE slot which means that if your HDD is the IDE type it must be connected to the end of the IDE ribbon (Master) and the IDE DVD writer should be on the middle connection of the IDE ribbon (Slave) so unless you are attempting to boot from a CD the boot order should be HDD 1st: Primary > IDE DVD writer 2nd: Secondary > Asus DVD writer 3rd:
Does the disk tray on the new optical drive open when the button is pressed, because if it is not detected in the BIOS it may be a power issue or a bad drive, if the disk tray does function pop a disk in and see if it reads.

[phillpower2]

Hi Janis
Is this your MB at this link http://www.digital-d...board/abit-bh7/
Can I ask whether your HDD is the SATA or IDE type? The reason that I ask is because you should just be able to connect the SATA drive and it should simply work, but looking at the picture at the attached link the MB only has one IDE slot which means that if your HDD is the IDE type it must be connected to the end of the IDE ribbon (Master) and the IDE DVD writer should be on the middle connection of the IDE ribbon (Slave) so unless you are attempting to boot from a CD the boot order should be HDD 1st: Primary > IDE DVD writer 2nd: Secondary > Asus DVD writer 3rd:
Does the disk tray on the new optical drive open when the button is pressed, because if it is not detected in the BIOS it may be a power issue or a bad drive, if the disk tray does function pop a disk in and see if it reads.

[D-Berd]

If I'm understanding correctly then check the jumper on the ide DvD and make sure the jumper is set to cable select.

[Janis]

The motherboard has one SATA connection which previously I have never tried to use. Hard drives one and two are on IDE controllers. The previous optical drives, also IDE, were set as the CDRW as primary, and the DVDwriter as secondary. No problems until I wanted to replace the CDRW with the ASUS SATA drive. I prefer my computers are set with the primary optical drive as the first boot device, just in case. This has never presented a problem as the pc moves on to HDD0 for booting purposes. Should I need a separate SATA driver or would windows have added that at the time of installation? (WIN XP PRO) Connections on the SATA drive and the motherboard are solid.

[phillpower2]

Couple of questions, one that I have asked you but you have not answered and it would be helpful!

Does the disk tray on the new optical drive open when the button is pressed

What is the answer to this please.
Have you installed the SATA drivers for your MB? http://www.abit.com....TYPE=Socket 478
Something else you can try if you have already got the SATA drivers is go into the BIOS and check if the PCIE frequency is set to Auto, if it is manually set it to 100 and see if that enables your SATA ports.

[Janis]

The door does open even though the drive is invisible (not in device manager). There doesn't seem to be a SATA driver listed for this board on the ABIT site. My choice seems to be enable SATA in BIOS and then have no optical drives, or disable and be able to use the DVD ROM

[phillpower2]

So we know there is power to the drive which is a start.
Here you go Intel chipset drivers http://www.abit.com....KET_TYPE=Socket 478
Try the drivers first and fingers crossed the issue could be resolved, if not try what I suggested in the previous post
" go into the BIOS and check if the PCIE frequency is set to Auto, if it is manually set it to 100 and see if that enables
your SATA ports".
There is no reason why you cannot have the IDE and SATA drives operational at the same time without any messing
around we will just have to persevere until it is right.

[Alzeimer]

After reading the manual for the ABIT BH7 the way i understand it is this way:

First unplug your SATA DVD writer and reboot into your BIOS disable the SATA controler in your BIOS and save your setting and reboot

Re-enter your bios and go enable your SATA controler, save you new settings and reboot but this time turn off your computer before entering windows

Connect your SATA DVD writer and make sure your IDE DVD writer jumper is set to slave (with the SATA controler enable only the seconadry IDE slave will be available).

Reboot first in your BIOS to see if both DVD (SATA master, IDE slave) are detected and if yes boot into windows and all should work.

(they are specific that first the SATA controler in BIOS be enable before connecting your SATA DVD)

[Janis]

Thanks for all the answers but it does come down to SATA drive only or IDE drives only. I printed out the information, checked all BIOS settings, more than once, all without the desired result. I have pulled the SATA for listing on craigslist and picked up a second IDE DVD writer.

[phillpower2]

Thank you for the update, I am sorry that we were unable to help you get the drives up and running