Are both drives going bad?

[danothemano]

I have a Sony DRU-120A DVD burner and Plextor CD/RW. Last week my Sony stopped working. If I open and then close the door it makes a funny noise (even if no disc inserted). If I put a disc in it Windows XP pro doesn't see drive. So I thought drive was going bad. This week my CD/RW drive is acting weird, put a disc in it and no noise put content on disc won't start. Also sometimes when I start PC it will hang when startup gets to part where it looks for drives. So I'm wondering if both drived are going bad or is something else wrong?

Does anyone have any idea what could be happening?

Thanks

[Ian]

Since both went bad in a short amount of time, it makes me wonder if there's something else wrong. Are they on the same IDE chain? If so, try a different cable.

If it was me, I'd try them in another computer. Then you'll know for sure.

[danothemano]

Thanks,

Like I said the Plextor is still working but acting weird. I don't have another computer to try switching but I will check cables.

[Justin42]

Maybe something to do with your power supply-- did you notice any power surges or anything? Or maybe the PS itself is just old (overloaded, something)...

[danothemano]

No surges, in fact the power supply is only one year old. I removed the Sony burner and replaced it with my old DVD player, so far so good.

[CDRecorder]

What brand is the power supply, and what is the wattage?

[pranav81]

I guess it's the IDE cable.I had a cable here which I had connected to my secondary chain.The burner is connected as master and the second 80 GB HDD is connected as slave.The problem started few days before,the BIOS would not detect the HDD,but would detect the burner.I thought there was loose contact in the power cable.I changed the power cable in vain.Then I just shook the HDD slightly and then restarted the computer,the HDD showed up.I changed the IDE cable and everything is working fine since then.
You can also try clean install of Windows.
See ya later,

::Pranav::