Need help: Replacing dead optical drive on Samsung X20

I decided to get a replacement optical drive for my samsung x20 today, after the internal Toshiba-Samsung DVD+R/RW (TS-L632) couldn't read DVDs anymore

As soon as I got home, I disassembled the laptop, took the old drive out, put the new one in, reassembled, and pressed the power button... to my horror, "No operating system installed" appeared on the screen . I went to the BIOS, and apparently my harddisk was gone

Then it occurred to me that the new drive was causing the problem, so I took the laptop apart and unplugged the little devil.. and now the computer boots perfectly fine.

Could someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong here?
This is my first time replacing a notebook optical drive, so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

Maybe changing the boot order so the hard disk was first would help.
Hmm... That's a strange problem. Maybe you DVD-drive got jealous of your hard drive and killed it.

 

hahahha, yeah, it is a very strange problem, if I plug in the old DVD drive, everything works fine. New drive, and both the harddisk and the drive is not detected, so I cant do anything to change the boot order..

I'm beginning to think this some optical drives aren't compatible with some laptops. Can anyone confirm this?

 

I have answered this in your other thread, which I have now closed since cross-posting is not permitted.

Continue further discussion here since this problem is not unique to Samsung notebooks.

John

 

First of all, sorry for cross posting, won't happen again.

I've attached screenshot of Device Manager, I don't know what to make out of it.

The replacement drive is a Hitachi-LG (GSA-T20N). I have tried to find a newer firmware for it to set it up as a slave, but to no avail. Can you help me on this?

The current firmware is WP03.

BTW, I have tested the new drive on another laptop and it works perfectly fine

 

The screenshot shows only a primary IDE channel and no secondary IDE channel. I recall Samsung did that on some other notebooks, possibly to make a small saving on power consumption.

So the challenge is to find another firmware for the GSA-T20N which, according to this, is a LG version and may want specific LG firmware upgrades.

There is WY04 for the HLDS version, but there's no mention of being slave.

The other possible courses of action are (i) look for a different burner, Perhaps Samsung, which has a slave firmware; or (ii) look for a jumper to put on the HDD to set the HDD to slave (I would try this first). The four pins next to the 44-pin connector are for jumpers. I attach a PDF file giving possible jumper configuration, but you should check the HDD manufacturer's website.

John

 

It occurred to me earlier that the jumper idea would work, but will it affect harddisk performance?

I will try it anyway, It's beginning to get frustrating not being able to find the proper firmware.

thanks for everything

 

I don't know. It may make a difference when the optical drive is also being used but I doubt if it will be significant.

You could run HDD benchmark such as HD Tune is both master and slave modes.

By the way, I think the jumpers used on desktop HDDs also fit the notebook HDDs.

John