[Chris80x]

I have a dell optiplex, the primary HD is a Western Digital 160gb Sata I also have a LG DVD/RW combo drive set to master on the IDE channel.

I recently attempted to add a 2nd ide maxtor HD and for the life of me cannot get both ide devices to show in the bios.. I've tried setting the ide hd as both slave, master and cable select and the dvd drive the same to no avail, always one will show in bios but the other won't.. however both ide devices will show in windowsXP and work just fine.. being that I need my drives to be bootable I need them to show in the bios as well.

I've tried 2 different IDE cables now one being a brand new asus cable..

I'm curious as to whether it could be a power issue?

My power supply is 500W +3.3V +5V +12V -5V -12V +5VS8
28.0A 35A 25A 0.5A 0.8A 2.5A

I'm running currently:

1 WD JS1600 160Gb SATA HD
1 Maxtor 7200rpm 120Gb IDE
1 LG DVD/CD/R/W COMBO

and most importantly, the energy hog PNY GEFORCE VERTA 9600GT

Other steps I've taken so far has been updating the bios, switching the cable and jumper settings to every possible combination, other then switching my Sata jumper settings which is OPT1 (I'm clueless on sata jumper settings).

The pc boots fine, although seems noticeably slower in boot and load times (although I had a virus or 2 recently that could be causing that) my main C:\ shows both in windows and bios, my dvd drive shows in both as well, my f:\ (ide hd) shows only in windows, even in disk management and works just fine.

Perhaps it would help if I describe what I'm trying to accomplish.. I want the Sata drive to be for gaming only and I want windows and data on my IDE. In order to be able to install windows I also need my dvd drive to be bootable. Being that the sata is my main drive in bios and I don't believe I can set it to slave without having something else as master on the sata channel.

I understand a few of the boot files for windows will be put on the sata no matter what and the rest will be installed on the IDE. That's okay with me at least most of the programs that windows will be running will stress my ide instead of my gaming drive.

Any advice would be highly appreciated as I've tried numerous forums, dell tech etc to no avail thus far. Cheers.

[Chris80x]

Thanks to the guys at FixYa I've found the solution. What I had to do was restore factory settings in bios and restart, once I did that all three drives showed up no problem although my pc is slow as dirt now thinking my psu may need to be upgraded.