K3B/Optical Drive trouble

[Wizzyglvl3]

I just installed ubuntu recently so I am still getting used to it, however I don't believe this is an ubuntu problem. I was trying to burn something to a disc and when i tried opening K3B (for the first time ever) it gave me a warning message
No optical drive found.
K3b did not find any optical device in your system.
I didn't really know what to do about this so i skipped it and went to burn the DVD when i realized from looking at the bar at the bottom that the movie was 1.5gb when the disk only held around 700mb. I went upstairs and found a new disk, completely empty and put it in. This disk had 4.7GB or 120mins of video, so i thought it would work. I went to burn it and it didnt give me the option so i looked down at the bar that showed how much space a disk had on it and if that was enough for what you wanted put on it. The bar still said i only had 700ish MB available so I was really confused. I pulled out the disk to make sure it was the right disk and seeing that it was I could only come to a couple of solutions. First I thought that the Optical Drive was broken. It is pretty old, but I hoped that wasn't the case or else I would have to buy a whole new one. Next I thought it could be the driver for the optical drive, except with the new Ubuntu OS i don't really know how to install new drivers. It also could be from me hitting it or something when I pulled the cover off the computer a while ago to look inside it. If anybody knows whats wrong or how I could fix it that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MrBrooks]

It sounds like it could be a few things:

1. The drivers are missing from the Ubuntu Operating System so you will have to do some searching for them.
2. The optical drive isn't enabled in the BIOS.

 

[Wizzyglvl3]

ill go check the bios in a minute, if that fails do you know where i could start looking for the drivers? It is a pretty old Optical drive so idk if they would even be around anymore

I just checked the BIOS and in the boot sequence it says that there isnt an optical drive. The only thing in the boot sequence that was found was the HDD which is all that is there atm aside from the Optical drive. Im thinking at this point the optical drive is either broken or isn't plugged in right, although im pretty sure its plugged in right

 

[MrBrooks]

Check that the cables are plugged in correctly. Also the optical drive won't appear in the boot sequence until it's enabled in the devices section. Sometimes Operating Systems and BIOS resets can change the custom settings back to default. For example, SATA drive port 1 is enabled but SATA drive port 2 is disabled as a DEFAULT. As a CUSTOM setting you would enable SATA drive port 2. Make sure the SATA/IDE ports are enabled.

I also have no idea where you would look for the drivers. I've never used Ubuntu so I wouldn't know where to begin.

 

[Wizzyglvl3]

Okay I just enabled all of the ports and it seems to be working now. I didn't really know what all the ports did, they all werent sata, there were PATA too but i guess it doesnt really matter what its called. I havent actually tested it yet but K3B finally recognizes the size of the disk so i guess its reading now. Thanks a bunch.

 

[MrBrooks]

No harm in enabling all of the ports as there are no devices connected to certain ports so no unnecessary power is withdrawn. I'm glad it's working, no problem.