Hello, My DVD burner gave up the ghost on me and I dug around and found in the closet: 1. an old PATA external HD enclosure 2. an old PATA DVD drive. Since my mobo is all SATA now, I can't connect the DVD drive, so I thought I could connect it through the USB external enclosure. I plugged it in and powered it up but it just bootloops, and windows says the Unknown Device has encountered a problem. I thought perhaps the problem is that it was trying to install the driver for a hard drive, not a DVD drive, I uninstalled whatever driver wasn't working properly, then downloaded the drivers for the DVD drive, and tried to manually install those with the wizard. However, it would not install, saying that it already had up-to-date drivers. So, at this point, I don't know what the problem is or how to fix it. Does anybody know, can I rig up this DVD burner this way or is it a fundamentally flawed approach? See pictures: https://s28.postimg.org/kxvytnw4t/IMG_20170209_213159.jpg https://s28.postimg.org/ms8tbej59/IMG_20170209_214151.jpg Thanks!
There is no reason for it to bootloop unless you have this external drive set ahead of other drives in the Boot order in the BIOS. Assuming the EIDE/PATA drive is good and assuming the external EIDE/PATA enclosure is good, there is no reason you should not be able to use this setup (assuming your computer's USB ports are good).
im not sure what you mean, but when I said 'bootloop' i didnt mean i was trying to boot from the DVD drive, I meant that it kept repeatedly making the 'insert hardware' noise, endlessly. so whatever it was that was trying to recognize the drive was just looping. not the computer itself
Oh! I didn't take it either way. A boot loop typically means the computer starts to boot up but before the boot process completes, it starts the boot process all over again. It does this repeatedly and endlessly (in a "loop") until the user kills power to the computer. At any rate, you asked if you can rig this EIDE (PATA) DVD drive in this way or not? Yes you can. But it assumes the drive and enclosure are in good working order. Now whether you can boot from it or not depends on if the motherboard supports it (most in recent years do), the OS supports it (most do) and of course, the DVD itself is bootable.
