i have found many threds concerning this topic on many web sites, but i can still not fix my problem. i just built a system with AMD athlon 64 3500+ socket 939, 1 gig if geil ram, K8N neo4 MSI moboard. i have 2 SATA Hard drives and a plextor SATA dvd burner, which i have come to hate. it reades fine, well i think it dose but im not sure. i have been getting the BSOD while installing games. anyway i think that is unrelated. to get to the point the burneer dose not burn cd's or dvd's, ive tried nero, roxio, the plextor software, alcohol, and windows but nothing works. i figured it was a bad drive so i threw it in my other computer for a test and it worked fine. that computer has no SATA hard drives jsut the burner is SATA. the moboard is a MSI k7ns delta2 with an AMD sempron 2400+ socket A in it and 256 megs of geil ram. Ive never used SATA before so i may have the layout wrong. it is like this

SATA2 = hard drive 2
SATA1 = hard drive 1
SATA4 = empty
SATA3 = Plextor burner

i have turned raid off on SATA 1-4, and have no clue how to get my second bank of SATA 5-8 connectors to show up in the bios. an anyonr help or should i jsut return this wonderful plextor product adn get a sony or something .

It is probably one of two things. First off, your motherboard BIOS may not properly support SATA optical drives even though the drive is recognized. Try different BIOS revisions to see if it solves your problems. Also, if you installed the nvidia IDE drivers uninstall them as they are pure garbage. Use the MS IDE drivers instead.

Brin04....self test self test self test. If the self diagnostic test fails then it is the hardware (Plextor) and if the self test passes I would recommend looking into a PCI SATA controller as a pass would indicate a good drive. Plextor offers a list of recommended PCI SATA controllers on their website. Good Luck with the RMA if that is what is needed.....

You could also try installing your Hard drives on S ATA 3 and 4 and put the Plex on S ATA 1 or 2. S ATA 3 & 4 are probably for raid and IDE config and is probably a different IDE controller which will work fine with your Hard drives but may be giving you hiccups with the Plextor. If you try that make sure you do like Bar81 said and run STD MS IDE drivers. Also make sure Bios is set to Auto detect for your IDE devices. Good luck.

thanks for the help i have tried everythin but the self test tools, but i took the drive out and my BSOD deaths cut back when installing, then i took one of my ram sticks out and they stopped all to gether i have not put the drive back in yet to try it again but could a bad stick of ram cause the problems with burning? another thing the dvd rom reades in the hard drive list in the bnios so could my moboard not support optical drives in SATA like bar81 said? and if that is the case i don't know how to make it work, ive done everything i know of in the bios.

Sounds like you did not get your Ram installed properly or you got a bad stick of Ram.You can download Mem test 86 and load it on a floppy or make a bootable cd and let it do a test of your memory, it will tell you if you have a bad stick. You just built this so questions. Did you install the chipset drivers off of the Mobo cd and did you try the Plextor on SATA 1 or 2 vs SATA 3 channel. What Bar81 meant (I think) is that Nvidea IDE drivers are very tempermental when it comes to optical drives and suggested that you use the standard MS IDE Drivers. Most people with Nforce and VIA chipsets use the MS standard IDE drivers, that is probably also why your CD-ROM is showing up as a hard drive. Your board will/does support S ATA optical drives you just have to find the right combination. Give this a try and let us know how you make out.

I think i have a bad motherboard that is causing all of my problems, because i get no errors on my ram test but games crash with vpu errors for my x800pro, when i take one of teh sticks of ram out the problem stops. i think that is why my burner is not workin either.

@Brin04. Easy way to check is stick your memory in the other two slots and see if the problem goes away. Try doing a clean uninstall of your ATI drivers (ATI Uninstall Application) and then reinstall the ATI drivers after reboot. You can also try setting you Bios to default settings and start troubleshooting from there.

Turn off VPU recover, that by itself can cause crashes. And update to the latest 5.6 drivers for your ATI card.

does anyone know how to run self-test on PX-712SA? there is no switch on this internal drive. maybe PlexTools?

are there any hacks or firmwares that will make this unit burn faster than 8x on -R media. i like it its fast but i feel the need for more speed.

Thanks for all the help it was teh nvidia IDE drivers.

I googled for plextor sata not burning and found this thread. I was having the exact same problem...Plextor-712SA would not properly burn DVD's. And it would fail leaving my harddisk light on steady...and locking up WinXP.

My config:
AMD athlon 64 3500+ socket 939, 1 gig if corsair ram, Fatality AN8 motherboard, 160 GB HD IDE, Plextor-712SA (Sata), ATA x800.

I went to add/remove programs, selected NVidia Drivers. It actually prompts you to select uninstalling EtherNIC, IDE and/or nForce PCI. I obviously uninstalled the NVIDIA IDE drivers.

Rebooted...came back up...works like a charm. Wanted to restate how helpful this was...maybe the next googler will become just as happy!

Thank you!!!!

Welcome. Nvidia drivers have ALWAYS sucked ass and they continue to do so. If only there were other viable AMD alternatives to their garbage chipsets. Oh well...

I have the neo4 platinum non sli with the 716 sa
1st off the native command queing corrupts data on your hard drive
disable it in the device manager under ide (assuming your using the nvidia drivers)
2nd for the 712 sa or 716 sa to work use the microsoft stand dual channel
ide driver.
3rd these drives seem finicky about cables I tried cable with a built in
90 degree angle the drives don't like it. I put the straight cable that came with the drive and it worked.
I hope the info helps someone else.

Another helpfull hint BUY the hitachi sata2 hard drive then download hitachi's
bootable cd utility and enable the drive for 300 mode. I'm getting burst speeds
of 184 whoohoo!

another note on the plextor sata drives the silicon image controller works for these but then you cant boot from cd

I don't think the chipsets are garbage. However the drivers are questionable(nvidia).
But think about the thousands of hardware configurations that have to be met.
The way they are doing it is the only way,That is get feedback and try to fix the problems.
The plextor sata dvd drives piss me off because they are the only ones with this drive out and the motherboard companies,nvidia,and plextor wont cooperate on solving the problems.
They should shoot for a motherboard that has 2 dedicated sata ports just for optical drives. That would make alot of people happy!
I feel plextor ,nvidia and the motherboard manufacturers need to come up with some kind of specification standard for them all to follow.

It should not be up to plextor to drive the mobo configurations. Since the Plextor drive works great with Intel and others, the incentive to be compatible lies with the mobo and chipset vendor. The Nvidia chipsets are designed mainly to support the ATA command set and HDD, not the ATAPI command set and ODD. Plextor drives work fine in the environments designed for or compatible with ODD. Nvidia and others just need to catch up.