Second Drive not accessible!

[Godhead7]

I am running a Dell system which came with a DVD Rom standard. I just purchased a CDRW drive installed in using the Y cable that came with the system per the installation manuals. I have the DVD set to Master and the CDRW set to slave.
Here is the problem: both drives work independently, yet if I have a data CD in one (even if I am not accessing that drive) and I put another CD (music or data) into the other, the second one I am trying comes up with an error telling me that the second drive is not accessible!
I have no idea why this is happening, but someone suggested that the IRQ's may be the same for both drives. If taht may be the case, how can I ck the IRQ's and how can I change them?
Is there anything else taht may be causing this error?

Thanks for the help.

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[camieabz]

If you can, run each drive on a seperate IDE cable. Running them on the same cable could be the main reason for this problem.

If the problem is IRQ related, see in the device manager.

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[Toejam31]

Optical drives are not assigned IRQ's. The IDE channels of the IDE controller are assigned the IRQ's. And I have never seen two channels given the same IRQ. If that was the case, neither device on the secondary channel would be functional. Major conflict.

I would take Camie's advice and put each drive on a separate cable. I would also update the chipset drivers and the firmware for each drive, as this might be a timing issue.

Normally, the best results are if the CD-RW is set as the Secondary Master.

Be sure that all devices are correctly identified in the BIOS.

Toejam31

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[camieabz]

Oh and double check your jumpers again.

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