Ok we had two ide dvd drives one failed so we replaced it with one sata dvdram drive, no we set the system to start from dvd drive. We put the sata drive on top because it's the one he wants to use first. now in win 7 both drives show up fine. Now we were trying to use a dvd from startup and it didnt read it, it acessed the regular ide drive and then proceeded to startup of windows.So we went back to the bios and it doesnt show the sata dvdram drive. But it doesshow the ide drive, and our sata hdd drive. Is this normal?any ideas?oh yeah our system is a new amd 2.8ghz dual core with 6gb memati 4850 video 500 gb sata driveone ide dvdram drive one sata dvdram drive any help would be appreciated.

Jenice - It doesn't show up in the BIOS...? Hmmm. I assume that nothing else was changed inside the BIOS during all of this. In which case, I would do the following:1.) Check to make sure the cables are plugged (power and data) firmly into the SATA DVD drive as well as the motherboard.2.) Try plugging the DVD drive into another SATA port. If it still doesn't show up in the BIOS, you may want to poke around and make sure the settings for SATA are set properly. Check to see if it's in IDE mode. If not, try to put it in that mode and see if that changes anything.

I guess im confused as to why you want me to check power cable and such.I know the drive works in wndows it shows up and is working,we put a dvd in it and it reads it fine. It only is not seen in bios. we have first boot set to cdrom-dvdand it goes to the ide one not the sata one. in fact if you put say win7 dvd in it and restart computer it goes straight to windows login page.but if you put win7dvd in the ide one and restart it goes to dvd and starts it. so I am confused as to why windows finds and uses it but bios doesnt.

ok when I start my computer it list my hdd and my sata dvd drive but when I go into the bios settings it doesnt show the sata dvd it list my ide dvd .maybe its because both are made by the same company? anyway still confused asto why the system would show it as it loads thins up but not in the settings. any ideas

As Wolfie has pointed out, the sata interface can emulate ide, but it is not the same thing. Here's an enormously complicated data-sheet on the subject that I guarantee you don't want to read :)) BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Services - 3 (EDD-3)Since Windows can see you sata dvd drive, but your system bios cannot detect it, that's the place to look. Until the bios can detect that sata dvd drive, it won't be able to offer it as a boot device.

Hi, The same problem exist on 2 of my machines. It was because 2 sata slots were used for Raid. They are not shown on the BIOS hdd list or Optical when using EIDE or ACHI but are still functional. My owners guide pointed out which were RAID. It is visible when using RAID or if it is placed in one of the other 6 slots. This my not be your case but it was mine and sounds the same. JB

As Wolfie has pointed out, the sata interface can emulate ide, but it is not the same thing. Here's an enormously complicated data-sheet on the subject that I guarantee you don't want to read :)) BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Services - 3 (EDD-3)Since Windows can see you sata dvd drive, but your system bios cannot detect it, that's the place to look. Until the bios can detect that sata dvd drive, it won't be able to offer it as a boot device. Ah yes, Carey. Here's another evil post of mine. Delete it too!

Is the jump set to master?Seasons greetings!