New-Computer Woes

I've had my new PC for almost a month now, and for the most part, it's not had any problems. I say for the most part, because there were some issues I had with it.

The motherboard, an ASUS P5B-MX WiFI Solo AP sports 4 SATA ports and 1 IDE port. As I was upgrading everything besides the drives, this proved to be an almost fatal mistake. I had a 80GB, a 160GB and a DVD-ROM that were all IDE. One of these drives would be left out.

My first thought was to go USB and buy an enclosure, but I didn't really think that the transfer speeds would be up to par, and another plug on my power strip and wires running to my PC wasn't going to make that corner of my room any prettier.

Instead of buying a new SATA drive and saving myself a headache I stubbornly decided to try the roundabout, unorthodox, alternative way, using a SATA-to-IDE converter.






I knew my chances of finding one were slim as these devices weren't exactly regularly-used items, but I was loath to buy a new hard disk.

After asking around several computer stores in the Megamall area with no luck, I asked my uncle who happened to know someone who sold the very device I was looking for. Hindsight, I should have taken his advice and sold him the 160GB so my losses in buying a new SATA drive would be minimized but I still thought I could save more money with the converter.

The first unit I recieved was a dud. It failed to detect any of the drives. I had it replaced and the new one finally worked.

It wasn't without fault, it failed to detect either the 160GB or the DVD-ROM. There were no instructions with the device. It only detected my 80GB (single partition, jumpers set to Master) which was fine with me, as I could now use all my drives at the same time. My 80GB hosted my OS, but it posed no problem as the BIOS allowed booting from any drive.

Just to satiate my curiosity, I ran Nero's Disc Speed test to see if the SATA-IDE converter made things worse. Although I didn't have a proper control for the results, it was just as fast as the 160GB on the IDE.

With the IDE connected to the 160GB and the DVD-ROM, and my PC booting from the SATA-IDE connection, I mopped my brow of sweat and thought - problem solved!

No such luck.

This time, the problem came from the DVD-ROM. Up until I got the SATA-IDE converter, I was forced to switch between the DVD-ROM and the hard disk manually, shutting down every time I needed a file from one or the other media.

I recall having used the DVD-ROM to install most of the software on my PC with no problems. Now it was acting up and refusing to read most of my backup DVDs! CDs seemed to work fine, as did pirated DVDs such as containing the entire fourth season of the series 24.

Just my backup DVDs that contained my PC installers, PSP games and girl-on-girl porn collection was unreadable! I kept getting an error: "incorrect function" when trying to read my backups. I managed to get it working sometimes, but only if I did the following:

1. Remove the hard disk from the IDE. DVD is the only device on it.


2. Boot into Windows. Run Doug Knox's XP CD fix. This removes filters that CD-burning software may have installed and left when uninstalled.


3. Reboot. Make sure desired DVD-R is already inside the DVD-ROM.

Windows then detects the DVD-R and can read it in explorer. However, opening and closing the tray caused the problem to re-appear.

I tried a System Restore and a new install of Windows XP but neither was able to get my drive working the way it used to.

Strangely enough, when I boot into DOS via UBCD, it can read the DVD backups just fine. The only problem is the DVD is flaky when it comes to booting. So booting into UBCD is a hit-and-miss affair. It has been this way since I got it, so maybe the DVD hardware really does have a problem.

Maybe I should just get a new SATA DVD-ROM save myself a headache.