slave drive issue

[heyjude85023]

i have a dell xps 400, 2.8ghz dual core, 2gb memory machine with 2 phillips dvd8801 drives. the pc originally came with a phillips 8701 and a dvd-rom drive. i wanted 2 rw drives so i purchased a phillips 8801. (i did not choose the 8801, i was just looking for a dell compatible drive at the time, but liked what i got.)

i put the 8801 in the upper slot and it became the master drive D (i was learning as i went along) i noticed that the original rw drive (the 8701, the slave drive E) would hang in dvddecrypter or imgburn as soon as it came to "Synchronizing the Cache" just prior to the start of the verify process.

thinking that there was something wrong with the drive, i did some research and flashed it to the benq 1640, even going up 2 firmware upgrades, but still the same issue. (note: i wasn't using both drives at the same time, but alternating or even using the slave drive by itself.)

so i figured the drive (8701) was just a dud and bought a second phillips 8801. still the same problem. that drive will not go beyond the "Synchronizing the Cache" phase. at this moment it is going on 30 minutes that it has been "Synchronizing the Cache". in the meantime, i have burned and verified 2 complete discs on the master 8801, and working on a third.

before i bought the second dvd-rw drive, i didn't have this problem with that drive slot. is it because this pc can only handle 1 dvd-rw drive, so the second one is a bust, or did i overlook some vital step in my zeal to upgrade this machine to the max?

[heyjude85023]

i had just installed the drive and was testing it out, but i forgot to test to see if it would just burn data and verify, and that seems to be working with nero startsmart 6.6. it's dvddecrypter and imgburn burning .iso files that seems to be the problem.

[NightTran]

did you have the pin at right spot on the back of the drive?

[Chewy]

with dell's you have to check bios for settings and make sure you are master/slave jumpered and the drives are in the appropriate position on the cable

[ed klein]

Asuming your hard drive is SATA connection.

One DVD-RW drive on the D drive master connection
One DVD-RW drive on the E drive master connection

Set jumpers and BIOS to agree. AND make sure you have 80 leads 40 pin IDE cables

[NightTran]

oh, sh-- Dell go to BIO, you have to turn it on

[BR7]

His XPS should be very similar to my E510 all I did is set the jumper pins Drive D is Master and Drive E as Slave and then I went in to BIOS and turned on the second drive.After that you should be good to go.I am thinking XPS and the E510 use the same bios or similar Dell has updated Bios from A05 to A06 here are the changes...
1. Improve CMOS checksum function.
2. Add support for newer processor steppings.
3. Improve PCIE not fatal error reporting.
4. Improve drive password feature.

[heyjude85023]

excuse my ignorance folks, but i just plugged the cables into the new drive the way they were on the old drive. i don't understand what ya'll mean by making sure the jumpers/pins are in the correct positions. while i have heard and read about jumper positions before, i have never had to use them for anything so never paid much attention to the discussion.

i did check the bios and they are listed as:

pata-0 master on
pata-1 slave on

[Abuilder]

Heyjude
Never mind all the bios talk for now. The main thing is you have the drives physically setup correctly.
When you are connecting two drives on the same cable the drives have to be set by a little jumper that is located to the left of where the IDE cable plugs in. One drive has to be set to Master (MA) and the other must be jumpered to Slave (SL) in order for the computer to address the drives properly. See the diagram I posted below. This is the diagram for your 8801's
Now make sure both drives are not!! Set the same with both of the drives jumper set to master or slave.
NOW: Some Techs disagree on this but the drive that is connected to the "center" connector on the cable should be the Slave (SL) drive and the drive on the end of the cable should be jumpered as the Master (MA).
With the drives wired correctly the computers bios should do all the configuring for you and you usually don't need to change anything in the bios.
I hope this solves your problem.
Peace

[BR7]

Resetting a drive's jumper is a simple matter of removing a plastic tab and sliding it onto a different set of posts.The first slot as shown in picture is master moving the pin to the second slot is slave I use a set of tweezers to do this it's the easiest way to pull out the plastic tab

[DellCA]

The XPS 400 uses the same chassis and motherboard as the Dimension 9150, so a large number of updates for the two will be identical. The E520 is part of a different line of Dimensions.

By default Dell systems have all IDE drives jumpered for Cable Select (CS). This means that which connection you use determines how the BIOS sees it (master/slave).

From your post above, you list them as being pata-0 master and pata-1 slave, which tells me you have them on separate cables. This might be part of the problem, as some drives must be jumpered a certain way when they are the only drive on the cable. Try changing them both to either Master or put them on the same cable and jumper them for Cable Select.

From what you describe, however, I don't think the drive itself is the problem (although I am not positive of this).

If you had any questions about the system you can reach me by email at customer_advocate@dell.com (please add 'attn: larry' to the subject). I will be more than happy to provide any help that I can.

I hope this information helps you,



Larry
Dell Customer Advocate
Customer_Advocate@Dell.com

[Abuilder]

DellCA
Wow! I was sure that CS was a thing of the distant past.
Live and learn (still) LOL
Thanks for the update.

[heyjude85023]

oh my gawd. ok, first, thanks to all who replied. (sorry for the delay in response, i got side-tracked on another project. i can now focus again on this one.)

i need several hours of free time to devote to this, but i will post my results as soon as i'm done.


ha ha. i just realized that the reason i didn't have any problems with the second drive slot prior to installing the second rw drive was because the dvd-rom drive wouldn't have been doing any synchronizing of the cache or verifying.

[heyjude85023]

ok, not the best pictures, but this is what i see when i look inside my pc. both drives have the pins set exactly the same - that is how they came.

[snagel]

So what exactly would you be looking for in BIOS. drive configuration or what. I have a DELL Dimension 3000 and I am having the same problem as above. I looked quite some time ago briefly at the BIOS but didn't see anything that stuck right out and said ooh oooh change me. I do know that my primary was set for CS. as DellCA stated. I changed that to Master and put my secondary on slave. Uninstalled numerous times and still did not have DMA enabled on the slave only PIO. Had a number of things come up over the last several months and never got back to it. I would like to get the thing corrected now though.
Correct me now if I am wrong to go into BIOS hit F2 repeatedly at the DELL splash screen. Then exactly what would I be looking for in an attempt to change the settings to DMA 2. My secondary DVD RW is a HP640c with light scribe.