Motherboard not recognizing DVD drive

[DrDoctor]

Hello,

I just finished roughly assembling my comp (cables still a mess, just testing parts) and I had to go buy a third SATA cable for my optical drive, since my motherboard only had two, and i have two hard drives.

So, I run out to a local Adel to buy a SATA cable. All going well. So, now I head home and plug the SATA cable into the drive and motherboard. So, I turn on the PC and enter the setup to set my Windows 7 DVD as the first boot priority, and....it doesn't even appear in the list. Looking at the drive, all cables appear to be secure. The drive itself will spin, and the light on the drive blinks steadily. I can't open the drive with the button, so I have to use a paperclip. Is this a faulty drive, or a bad cable?

I have checked all other parts, and they work. I also have an external USB DVD Drive that I can use, if it'll work.

The motherboard is a ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3

 

[cl-scott]

Just to make sure, take one of the SATA cables from the HDDs, which you know are good, and connect it to the ODD. If the ODD now works, you have a bad cable, or possibly a bad port on the motherboard, and you can always try moving the other end of the cable to a different SATA port on the motherboard while you're at it. If the drive still doesn't work, I'd replace it. And the fact that it won't eject tends to say to me it's defective, because that should work regardless, but since it's quick and easy to do the above mentioned tests, you may as well just to be thorough.

 

[price_th]

Bad drive is my guess. However it may just be a bad belt. If you open the tray can you see two disks (one big, one small) with what looks like a v groove in the edge. If so there should be what looks like a black rubber band. They tend to dry out and break and when they do the tray can't retract and won't see any disk.

 

[price_th]

Oh and yes the USB DVD will work fine.

 

[DrDoctor]

Best answer selected by DrDoctor.

 

[DrDoctor]

Just to make sure, take one of the SATA cables from the HDDs, which you know are good, and connect it to the ODD. If the ODD now works, you have a bad cable, or possibly a bad port on the motherboard, and you can always try moving the other end of the cable to a different SATA port on the motherboard while you're at it. If the drive still doesn't work, I'd replace it. And the fact that it won't eject tends to say to me it's defective, because that should work regardless, but since it's quick and easy to do the above mentioned tests, you may as well just to be thorough.

I ran a test with no SATA cable connected at all. Opened and closed. Tried the SATA cable I bought: Same problem, tried on two different ports. They were SATA 3 GB/s ports, though, and the one I had that came with the motherboard was connected to a 6 GB/s port. Would that make a difference? The drive itself isn't defective.

 

[cl-scott]

I ran a test with no SATA cable connected at all. Opened and closed. Tried the SATA cable I bought: Same problem, tried on two different ports. They were SATA 3 GB/s ports, though, and the one I had that came with the motherboard was connected to a 6 GB/s port. Would that make a difference? The drive itself isn't defective.

It shouldn't. SATA ports should be backwards compatible, so if you had the same problem on 3 different ports using the same cable, then I would suspect that cable is bad. Did you try taking one of the cables from your HDDs, just to see if the ODD would then be detected? If you can boot the Windows installer from a disc with the known good cable from one of the HDDs, then it would be a bad cable. Go out, get a new cable, put everything back the way you want, install Windows... Profit!

 

[DrDoctor]

It shouldn't. SATA ports should be backwards compatible, so if you had the same problem on 3 different ports using the same cable, then I would suspect that cable is bad. Did you try taking one of the cables from your HDDs, just to see if the ODD would then be detected? If you can boot the Windows installer from a disc with the known good cable from one of the HDDs, then it would be a bad cable. Go out, get a new cable, put everything back the way you want, install Windows... Profit!

I tested that cable with a hard drive and connected it to a 6 GB/s port, and the hard drive connected. The drive was recognized fine.

 

[cl-scott]

Then it would sound like you have a bum ODD.

 

[DrDoctor]

Then it would sound like you have a bum ODD.

The ODD works with the cable I received with the motherboard.

Welp, my brain is breaking...