ok i understand better now thanks for the info. Anyway to plug it in an Intel based pc?

It's getting plugged into UPS and sent back. They'll probably plug it into a Wintel system and charge me a re-stocking fee because it works just fine.

FWIW, NCIXUS is totally worthless when RMAing hardware. It's been over a week since they received the drive back, and have still not verified if it's a bad drive or not. So I demanded and got a refund.

Now, I have to decide whether to try another drive or not. The Egg has them now. But I have a hunch that I'd be wasting my time.

Sure would be nice to know if anyone has one of these, or even a similar LG drive, running on a SIL controller card.

Does your SATA card works with SATA DVD burners?

If it was me I would buy another from a different vendor like you could from newegg.

Yes it will be a hastel and you might have to pay shipping to RMA it "again" if it doesn't work.

Or/and get a few different SATA cards try them with the drive and RMA the ones that don't work, but then again you will get socked with restocking and RMA shipping.

This early in the game you don't have many other options other than too wait for others to report

Beats me. It's a Rosewill SIL 3114, I thought it was supposed to handle optical drives OK. I don't have any others to try on it. It's hard to find cards that specify what the chip is. Suggestions welcome. This card seems to work great otherwise.

Problem is that I've left a hole in my tower and it's really bugging me. Just sits there staring at me. I'm trying to decide whether to put back one of the 6 other IDE burners laying around, or what.

Yeah the dreaded empty 5.25" hole!

I know how you feel in that respect

I have been searching around and continue to do so.

From other posts, Sil 3114 is supposed to be fine with ODD. I assume you have your Sil 3114 flashed with non-raid bios?

Here are other threads just in case
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f43/suugest...r-card-233550/
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f7/silicon-...troller-231715

You probably can try Sil 3512 sata card. But if I were you and really want the H20L, I would just upgrade the mobo with onboard intel sata ports.

Intel is not an "upgrade", IMHO, won't happen anyway.

AFAIK, the SIL 3512 cards are all PCI-X, also not an option. The Rosewill card is supposed to be fine as-is, it remains in non-RAID mode by default. Where would I get a "non-RAID" BIOS?

I ordered a LG H62N to play with, will see how that goes.

Sil 3114 BIOS here: http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...ctid=2&osid=0&

Flash with the b####.bin (Base or IDE bios) to make it non-raid.

Also check this post by LUK where he said he had problems with Sil 3114, very low burst rate, obviously for ODD.

Looks like I might be screwed with this card. I cannot get it to flash BIOS at all, looks like it has the wrong flash chip or something. The base driver won't work with the current BIOS, so that's that. This is probably the reason the LG drive wouldn't work.

The only other chip on the card besides the SIL chip has the name "Holtek" on it, which is not a supported flash chip for the BIOS flashing. It doesn't help that the flashing instructions are written in GEEK.

Tried flashing from REAL DOS??

Found a cheap-assed SYBA card, SIL 3114, with the right memory chip and was able to flash it to the base BIOS, installed base driver. Hooked up the new LG H62N and it's working like a dream.

Off to order another GGC-H20L. Now I have to figure out what to do with an H62N when the H20L gets here. The H62N appears to be a fine burner.

Nice and good luck CDan

You're not going to wait for the GGW-H20L, CDan?

CDan, I had a similar issue with GGC-H20L.

I run Windows Vista Ultimate, however, but just like you, after I first connected the drive Windows would end up showing me BSODs or locking up the computer shortly after the boot was complete.

I tried to disconnect everything but after checking on the Vista Problems and Solution Reports I figured out that the DVD Region+CSS Free executable (DVD43.exe) was the responsible for the mess, since it was conflicting with the system's Kernel!

I unistalled it and now everything is just fine!

So, as many of us might run this application, I thought maybe you're experiencing the same problem.

Hope you solve your problem, as this drive is the least expensive one can get with these specs and have worked really fine for me, so far!

Good luck!

CDan, sorry to hear about your woes with the SIL 3114. I might have been able to help if I had gotten this drive a couple of weeks sooner. I have an intel mobo with both SIL and intel ICH on board. Also, have 2 the syba SIL 3114 sata pci cards installed. Good to hear you got it resolved it must have been very frustrating.

So with this GGC H20L drive should I install it on the ICH or Sil port? or can I install it on the syba Sil card?

Intel definitely. You can't flash the onboard SIL BIOS, you have to add it to the board BIOS, so unless it's already showing as a SATALink, (not SATARAID), then it has the wrong BIOS. The cards will be fine also, again assuming they can be flashed to the correct BIOS. They must have the correct memory chip.

Thanks Dan, will do!

Did anyone find a solution for getting this drive to run properly? I have a GGC-H20L running on XP PRO with an Intel board and built-in SATA with different problems. Some software works, others, specifically DVDFab, doesn't even see BluRay discs. I'm not the only one with that problem either. I just wanted to know if someone found a controller that they got to work flawlessly.