How do i make Linux recognize CDrom drives?
 

Does anyone have any idea why Linux cannot mount or see whats on a CD that I know has data on it?

It seems if Linux is supposed to be such an advanced OS then mounting should be A simple operation, instead of locking up, not seeing data on a disk or giving some strange messages from the command line.

Ive tried all the advice, googled for an hour on the subject, read the man pages for mount and fstab and nothing seems to work.

What else should I try to get Linux to recognize CDrom drives or the data on a CD?

Have you verified the disc is readable in another machine? Or that you can read it under another OS using the same drive?

CD/DVD-Rs, especially cheap ones, are extremely finicky. I have burned discs in one drive that would not read in most other drives I put it into, and one brand of DVD-R would stop working after 1 month of being burned.

Yes, I have tried several different CDs in a windows machine and they are readable and have data on them that Linux should be able to see.

Does this happen with all CD's or just a few ones?

Check what filesystem is used on the CD's and see if it's supported by your system. Maybe it's an NTFS formatted data and you don't have it installed.

Also try if the CD-drive does read any CD disk at all. If the drive is dead, then only a new drive can help.

Also, can you please post the commands you used and what the "strange messages from the command line" were?

What happens if you try to boot a linux live-cd, one you know boots, thereby bypassing the operating system and going directly to the drive. It's another try, but the best next try sounds like a new drive.

This seems to be isolated to my DVD writer. I should be able to read and write DVDs and CD-r/CD-rw with it correct? Or does it only read and record DVD discs?
I thought I had written CDs with it A while ago. :?:

This seems to be isolated to my DVD writer. I should be able to read and write DVDs and CD-r/CD-rw with it correct? Or does it only read and record DVD discs?
I thought I had written CDs with it A while ago. :?:

Now a disk is stuck in the drive that was working, it seems to be stuck in a loop and will not eject. I can hear it continue to read and the light comes on and then goes off. :(

There is definitely something up here. A DVD burner should be able to burn and read CDs as well. If you say it works fine with Windows, then it may be something wrong in Linux, but I don't know what it may be.

i believe the cd's are not beling read under linux cause the disc are not mounted automatically in each distro, you could try giving a command i.e. mount /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom .... where hdb is your cdrom connected to secondary ide and cdrom is a dir under mnt.