Cant see CD/DVD IDE combo drive in bios(or windows)when I only have SATA drives

[mihe22]

I am by no means a hardware expert, so I bow my head to the gigabyte hardware Gurus.

My scenario, I have :

GA-EX58-UD3R Motherboard
3 Sata Hard Drives
A CD/DVD combo on the IDE
NO IDE HARD DRIVE
NO FLOPPY DRIVE

I installed the trial version of windows 7 a while back with my new computer hardware.  However, my CD/DVD drive stopped working, so off I went and bought a new one... this also didn't work

I've looked into the jumper options.. and all the options I've tried for the CD/DVD still do not make the drive visible in the bios or operating system  (Master.. and at the end of the cable, slave and Cable Select)

Is it actually possible to have and IDE CD/DVD drive when you only have Sata hard drives? ( I just can't believe it would be possible!)
I've been playing around with the bios for... well  months, and I just gave up

Now my windows activation is about to run out, and I have no way of installing windows 7 without a cd/dvd drive.  So my questions are

for my scenario:

1) Should the CD/DVD combo drive be set up as a Master on the jumper options (It's the only one on the IDE cable, it's added to the end of the cable, and the end of the cable  does not have a blue end)

2) Is there something simple that needs to be set in the bios, when you only have a CD/DVD on the IDE ports, and the rest Sata Drives ?

[Fatman]

not sure about the x58 boards...... but do you have an option in bios to set SATA/IDE to IDE mode? Just a guess

[mihe22]

yeah... I've tried that.

To no avail.

The CD/DVD still doesnt show up, the sata hard drives show up fine...
I've been playing around with the bios setting for ages now.. hmm.

I'm just wondering if it's even possible to have sata, and only one IDE that's not a harddrive

[mihe22]

Okay.. got new cable... and I've done a little test, adding IDE on its own to the end of the cable

Some things show up, and some things don't.

My Maxtor IDE Doesn't show up with CS Jumper settings
My Hiachie IDE does show up with CS Jumper settings
Neither of my 2 cd/combos show up with CS Jumper settings


I think my BIOs hates me... it just doest want me to be able to use CD/DVD drives.. the annoying thing is that I have already bought windows 7 on CD... I just can't install it without a CD/DVD drive!

[Fatman]

Instead of putting your jumperto CS (cable select) put them to MASTER and SLAVE on your drives. (Master or primary will be at the end of the ribbon and slave or secondary hooks up to the middle one), then reboot to bios and see in the standard cmos page if they (drives) are there. If not, move down to IDE Channel 0 Master and press enter and auto select and let it see if it can find your drive, if so then do it for the rest of them and see how that goes..I hope it made sense LOL....Good luck