System no longer recognizes CD-ROM or CD-RW

"I used 2009,went from a 160 to 500gb drive.... and now it shows 417gb "unallocated". And, I am a complete novice when it comes to managing partitions. Went thru forums y'day and read everything I could find, then tried several  solutions suggested there: your suggested use of Secure Zones, as well as MBRWork, and gpared (or something like that). The SZ trick didn't work for me at all.... but being a novice maybe I didn't do it right.

In using the other sugg, all I succeeded in doing was making my HD unbootable... had to do a another complete restore... w/same unallocated  space result.

Can you be more specific about the exact steps to go thru in the SZ trick? Do you create the SZ in the Acronis program and delete it from the Acronis rescue disk? I'm lost in the partition wilderness."

I rec'd several responses -- thank you for them -- but I was still unsuccessful in dealing w/the unallocated space. I will still try to do it but I've encountered a serious problem in the meantime. Somehow I've done something so that my machine no longer recognizes either my CD-ROM or CD/DVD-RW. When I boot up, the lights come on momentarily as they always did. But when I put a disk in the light comes on, the drive spins, and ..... nothing. In the BIOS, it says "not present". Of course neither do they appear under  My Computer.

I even went back and disconnected the 500gb and connected the 160gb thinking that it was something I did to the 500. But that didn't work either. Bottom line, I cannot boot from the IT recovery disk since the system can't find the drive.  Anyone have any idea what I did???