> I've just installed a new SATA DVD burner and a new SATA hard-drive on my
> system and have some problems and questions.
> I have the ASUS M3A motherboard and, until a couple of hours ago, I had
> two 750 GB SATA hard drives and an IDE DVD burner. The hard drives are
> close to full and the IDE burner was getting very reluctant to opens its
> tray - five minutes of right-clicking on Eject was getting to be the norm
> to open it - so I bought a new SATA DVD burner and a 3 TB SATA hard drive
> to add to the system.
> After mounting the new drive and burner in the case and getting both units
> power, I connected their SATA cables to the remaining two plugs on the
> motherboard and assumed I was good to go.
> Problem 1:
> But when I rebooted, I could not get the mouse to work for love or money.
> I tried:
> - changing the batteries in my wireless mouse
> - trying an old serial mouse
> - trying a newer serial mouse in both USB and serial ports
> Nothing worked; the mouse was just frozen in the center of the screen.
> (The keyboard worked though; it is a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse
> combo so they use the same USB port). Finally, after my umpteenth reboot,
> I went into the wireless mouse settings and tried to get to one of the
> later tabs. But I never did figure out how to select a specific tab
> without a mouse and inadvertently got into the action for the left mouse
> button. After playing with THAT for a while, trying to get it to set
> "click" as the action again, suddenly my mouse started working again. I
> can't figure out why I'd suddenly have mouse problems after installing a
> hard drive and DVD burner and I'm just as baffled about why it suddenly
> started working again. It's behind me now but I'm curious to know what
> might have caused this so that I can avoid doing it again.
> Problem 2:
> In running power to the new hard drive and burner, I realized that they
> need the newer style thin black power connectors - sorry I don't know the
> proper name - rather than the older, fatter, white power connectors. I
> looked around and found that I had two more of these bundled together with
> some other cables at the bottom of the case, still secured with a cable
> tie. I broke the cable tie (I couldn't figure out how to open it without
> breaking it) and ran the cables to the new devices. It was a single cable
> with two of those black power ends on it, one at the middle and one at the
> end. Unfortunately, the only way I could get the middle power connector
> into the proper orientation to connect it to the new hard drive was to
> turn it 180 degrees. It seems to be properly seated but is that going to
> be a problem down the road? The cable was resistant to turning that far
> but I couldn't figure out any other way to get that power connector on the
> hard drive. I'm a little worried that this might put too much strain on
> the cable and cause problems.
> Problem 3:
> On one of my attempts to get the mouse working again, I put the Nero 10 CD
> in the new burner and closed the drawer. It launched the Nero 10
> installatiion program but I had no mouse to click on to select "Install"
> so I just did a shutdown. Now, after another reboot, the computer is still
> seeing the new burner (as drive F:) but I can't open the door with either
> the button on the drive or the Eject option in the context menu. The Nero
> CD is still in the drive. I don't understand why the tray won't open. How
> do I resolve this problem? I know the burner is getting power because the
> LED comes on when I try to open the tray. The SATA cable seems to be
> properly seated at the back of the drive. The drive opened smoothly on my
> very first attempt when I first loaded the Nero CD.
> Do I need to do some kind of SATA configuration? If so, what do I do?
> Questions:
> I'm still running XP SP2, which I know is out of service. The hard drive
> box says it needs SP3 in order to work with the new hard drive.
> 1. Am I correct in assuming that I shouldn't do anything with the new
> drive until I've completed the installation of SP3, which I will do
> immediately after I finish making a backup of my critical files? (That's
> why I want to get the new burner working now since I expect it will be
> faster than the old one and get my backup done that much sooner).
> 2. The box also says I may need a special driver in order to access space
> above 2 TB on the new drive. Where can I find that driver? I've laso read
> that a special file system may need to be installed due to the size of the
> drive. How do I do that and what are the implications for using the drive?
> 3. The System Requirements on the box calls for "6 Gb/s SATA interface
> connector or motherboard or add-in card (backward compatible to SATA 3
> GB/s)". Since the ASUS M3A is SATA II, not SATA III, does this mean I
> still need to get this add-in card? I've already connected it to my
> existing SATA plug and Windows saw it on the last reboot, even thought I
> haven't formatted it yet and it doesn't appear when I click on My
> Computer. I'm guessing the drive will work as presently set up, although I
> may not get access to all of the drive or performance may be below par. Or
> is that too optimistic?
> Sorry to put so many issues in the same post but it seemed more logical to
> put all these related issues in a single post than to split it out over
> several....
too long and complicated for people here. That will be a lesson to me for
