[JoshK]

I have two CD burner drives in my PC, an old Sony and a newer Plextor.  Both are CD-RW's and not DVD-RW drives. Anyway, my computer is constantly dropping one or both of the drives from my computer (explorer doesn't show them, programs don't either) after some period of use.

So I'll be ripping some CD's on this PC with EAC, maybe finished a couple, and then go to put the next disk in and the drive isn't in the EAC drop down anymore, nor does it show up in explorer.  I go into computer management, into the device manager and rescan for hardware changes, sometimes it'll show back up, sometimes it won't.    Its the strangest thing.  In all my years working with computers I've never come across this one before. 

Has anyone seen anything like this before?  Could it be some sort of IRQ conflict?  In these cases, I haven't plugged in any new hardware (even USB or other removeable storage).   Its been doing this for a couple of months.  Its  really irritating to say the least. 

[mgalusha]

Are the jumpers on the drives set to master and slave or are you using "CS" - cable select. Some older IDE cables and drives don't always work as expected with CS enabled. If so, you might try changing the jumpers.

Mike

[JoshK]

Thanks I'll try that.  I think I have cable select.  The plextor is a newer drive, but the sony is ancient (but is a workhorse and stable).

[Len_Dreyer]

If Mike's suggestion doesn't work, unplug the Sony to determine if the system stabilizes without it. There can be problems with sharing EIDE & IDE drives on the same cable. Also, if you haven't yet, assign permanent drive letters to all drives including externals, this won't help your problem, but it will keep the os from assigning the same drive letter to multiple drives and allow you to set up reliable backup/sync software jobs.

Lastly, make sure your using the ide cable that came with the plextor.

Here's a little more info:

http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/ide-cable-select.html