I recently purchased a LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive and I am having some problems installing the drive. The drive is found in my Hardware Manager and is listed correctly. Also it states that the driver is working fine. When I put either a blu-ray or hd-dvd disc in, the dvd icon in "My Documents: chages from DVD-Ram Drive to CD drive and nothing happens. I am also running PowerDVD 7 Ultra and that will not even boot the disc up. Also I have a Xbox 360 HD DVD and when I connect it to my PC it does the same thing. I did installed the UDF 2.5 Driver for Xbox 360 HD DVD Drive support and now I can read the file structure of the disc. Also AnyDVD HD can read the disks and rip to my HD, but cannot play directly from the drive. Since I am able to play from my HD I am kind of thinking that it might be a SATA issue as my mobo has to be maybe 4-5 years old. I am fresh out of ideas and anything would be great.


Setup
Asus A8AE-LE mobo (only has 2 SATA150)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200
MSI NX8600GTS 256MB HDCP Video Card
HTO Striker 7.1 Audio Card
PowerDVD 7 Ultra
AnyDVD HD
Monitor not HDCP but that is why I have AnyDVD HD.

Welcome to cdfreaks.

Changes from DVD-RAM drive to CD Drive when you put a disc is a normal Windows behaviour, so don't worry.

Your motherboard has two chipsets, Northbridge ATI RS482 and Southbridge SB400. I believe the two SATA ports are in Southbridge. I'm not familiar with ATI chipset whether it works for optical drive or not, so you might want to test with Nero CDSpeed's burst rate test and if you get around 30-45MB/s then I believe you're fine.

Regarding PowerDVD cannot see the disc, if you click the "drive icon" as picture below, do you see any of your drive's letter?

powerdvd_open_drive.png

To answer your question, yes powerDVD does see my drive. I had this nagging feeling that since my chipset is ATI then I might have a problem. Plus my mobo is pretty much a piece of junk. I get off work here in less than an hour. I will run Nero to see what the speed is, but for some reason I keep thinking that has to be the SATA controller. On a side note a couple days ago I ordered a Foxconn 6150K8MD mobo to replace by compaq pos (before I had these problems) and that board has a Nvidia Geforce 6150 chipset a nvidia 6150 Nothbridge and a nvidia MCP430 Southbridge plus instead of SATA150 it has SATA 3.0GB/s. I have no idea if that will help but it is sure worth a try. I did also order a SATA to USB 2 adapter if all else fails.

NVidia chipset wont work, unfortunately.

If all fails, this one should work: SYBA SD-SATA-4P PCI SATA Controller Card

Where the heck do you get this info at? I looked all over LG's website for the system requirments and it does not state that it will not work with Nvidia chipset. I am going call LG today and see whats up. I would hate to have to use a SATA to USB 2 adapter on my new mobo or a SATA Controller Card, but I guess if that is what it takes. Do you have any experience with controller that you listed?

I forgot to mention that I even contacted Compaq customer support and gave them the drive and my pc and after 30 minutes and having to transfer me to an acutal Compaq tech, he told me that there shouldn't be any problems buying the drive. If this is not the case I would have been pissed if I had not already bought a new mobo.

zevia is our HD-Blu-Ray expert. Plus there has been people with the same trouble with this same drive

I apologize if I came off as bitchy. That was not my intention.I apologize if you or zevia took any offense to my comments. I just was wondering if there was some offfical documentation that stated that. This drive has been a pain in my butt for the past 3 days. I would love to put a PCI SATA card in but my case is small and I have a 8600GTS and a Striker 7.1 already in and pretty much no room left to install more cards. I am thinking that I will have to try to see if my new mobo might, maybe work and if not I will have to use the SATA to USB 2 adapter I guess. I heard that might work.

You know how salesmen/women are to get a sale. We get a lot of this here where this person told me this and that and it's doesn't work. I understand your frustration.

zevia might have some documentation. I don't, just real life experiences. There is a lot of info here at CDF's but these drives are fairly new. I don't have one yet.

Yah, I think that the best thing to do right now is call LG. I did just get a reply from an email that I sent them and the responder told me to call and speak with a tech. I am hoping that does the trick. I dunno. But, hey the people that have the drive say it is freakin sweet. Maybe you should get one??!!

I doubt LG will make it right and not sure what you want them to do.

If i had the money to buy one i would already have one maybe later on i'll get one.

I have a Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player hooked up to my HDTV and receiver but now i think it was a bad buy.

It never hurts to try. Worse case I have to buy a new mobo and processor and where I sit that isn't that big of a deal. Have had my eye on a quad core setup and since it appears that this drive does not like to play I guess that is the push I need. Thanks guys for the help. I know answering some guys rants and problems is not high on your list. I appreciate all the help. I guess I wil have to stick it out for a while with my 360 hd dvd drive.

Welcome to CDF's

If you need help just ask. A lot of Guru's here. Let us know what you end up doing. I might help someone else.

I just got off the phone with LG and the tech told me that they are having problems with getting the drive to work with older sata controllers (not quite sure what that means). He said that they are hoping to have a new firmware update out (when I aksed how soon was soon he said soon) that will address this issue. He did offer some advice: Get a PCI SATA controller. Well then.

Hi joshg21, as Bob said, we've been here quite a while to know that many of our members have problems with nvidia chipsets, actually since the beginning of SATA DVD burners a couple years ago.

Yes, I have the Syba card and works great with optical drives. The card uses SiI (Silicon Image) 3114 chipsets. Other SiI chipset works too. Other controllers that works fine is Intel chipset onboard, fyi.

Regarding USB to SATA controller, I have little experience with that so someone might be able to chip it. But I don't trust USB that much (even 2.0) since I believe it shares bandwidth with your other USB devices. And we need a clean bandwidth for this drive especially it supports 5x BD read so you need a constant data transfer rate for about 20+ mins for 25GB data (if you ever need to rip a BD disc). With that in mind, I would put the drive "internally" with PCI to SATA card and not external with USB to SATA converter.

But of course you can give USB to SATA controller a try if you already order it and let us know how it works.

I am glad to hear of your experience. Given the fact that both the USB adapter and the SATA PCI Card are only aboyt $30 together I think I will give both a try and see what happens. I am still going to get a new mobo and processer, but my crappy wife says I have to wait until my birthday. WTF? Damn wives and thier control over our check books. March can't come quick enough. Thanks both of you for the help. You guys sure do know your stuff. Hopefully all will go well

Lets at least get it up and running good for you. Post when you get the parts you ordered installed. There might be a bios update on that card but zevia would know more about that. I don't have that card here. Thanks for that info zevia i might need one sometime.

i was just checking on SYBA SD-SATA-4P PCI SATA Controller Card card that zevia had mentioned and I also noticed the other thread about flashing that card. I was wondering what he used to flash it with and what driver did he update to? I hate to sound like a newb here. but I have had experience with PCI SATA Cards. Also apologizing for the double post.

zevia will know

The card comes from manufacturer with RAID bios. For it to work with optical drives like your LG drive, you will need non-raid bios. Get SiI bios here http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...&ctid=2&osid=0 and flash with Base/IDE bios in DOS. Good luck.

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