This is easy though you may not like the reason's
The First IDE Drive on the Primary IDE Chanel is always the Hardware First Boot Device no matter where you chose to install Windows to.
As such it will always have the Peboot Files necessary to tell the remainder of the Hardware where to find the Windows Loading Files. Once you reconnected the IDE Drive the Primary Files that where previously copied to the SATA Drive where no longer on the Primary Hardware Boot Device so you need to reinstall or if you have a M$ Branded Install Disc do a Repair Install of the OS with the IDE Drive connected.
No matter what you set the BIOS to as a Primary Boot Device the Hardware will always look on the First Primary IDE Drive for the Preliminary Boot Files necessary to tell the computer where to find the files that it can load it's OS from.
However it may pay to test the IDE HDD with it's makers Testing Utility because the Drive could be going off and heading to Silicon Heaven. If the HDD it functioning correctly it may need to be formatted as the Partition Tables could have of sustained some damage and need redoing. 
For the HDD Makers Testing Utility you can look on the IDE Drives Makers Web Site or grab a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD which has most of the HDD makers testing Utilities on it for free from here
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html
Col
Your Welcome Tobi
I aim to confuse. :^0
That used to be a problem a few years ago but I haven't seen too many instances of it recently. Probably because there are no more IDE Drives being sold.
Col
Fresh XP won't boot into SATA
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512mb AGP graphics
SIL 3112 revision 2 SATA raid
2 SATA drives
2 IDE HDD drives on primary
2 IDE optical drives on secondary
Boot drive has always been SATA 1, which has a 'C' and 'D' partition. It CHKDSK's with no errors.
IDE master is 'E'
IDE slave is 'F'
SATA 2 is 'G'
I've just done a clean install of XP Pro SP3 onto the existing 'C' partition.
I have SIL 3112r SATARaid controller on floppy, did F6 and completed install OK. Award Phoenix BIOS is set to boot in this order; SATA-SCSI, CD-ROM, HDD-0.
First attempt went screwy with Windows system on SATA 1 drive, but NTLDR, boot.ini, pagefile and other boot files on first IDE device, which now became 'C'. This changed the new install on SATA 'C' to 'D'. It did manage to boot but was unstable, BSOD's on PFN_LIST_CORRUPT, and PAGE FAULT IN NON-PAGED AREA.
So I unplugged the IDE cable from mobo and installed again to SATA 1 'C' partition to make sure that NTLDR etc, stayed where they should.
All seemed fine, Windows booting properly to SATA 'C'. I installed the first few drivers, graphics, monitor, anti-virus, network, Windows/.NET updates, did a few restarts, all was working well.
I reconnected IDE cable and booted up, to get 'NTLDR missing, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart'.
I used a Hirens bootCD to look at my drives/partitions, and saw that 'C' was now pointing to the IDE drive again. I deduce that my system still wants to boot from IDE rather than SATA despite BIOS being set to boot 'SATA,SCSI' first. If I pull the IDE cable from mobo, it boots fine.
I think I'm missing something in BIOS or raid setup but I need help please.
Many thanks for reading long post.
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