I am upgrading my younger brothers Dell desktop and installing a second SATA hard drive.
On the motherboard there are 4 physical sata ports 0,1,2 & 3.
Port 0 is connected to the HD that came with the desktop (boots xp from)
Port 1 is the DVD writer and 2 & 3 are free.
I have connected the new Maxtor 250gb HD to both ports (2&3) and tried to get windows to recognise them with no luck.
In the Bios ports 2 & 3 are “not recognised in this chassis” with or without anything plugged in but ports 4 & 5 are available even though they don’t physically exist on the motherboard?!?!?
The Motherboard recognises the new Maxtor HD if I remove the DVD writer and connect it to port 1, but then I can’t use the DVD writer!
If I turn ports 4 & 5 (which don’t physically exist) on in Bios the system won’t boot because “there are no drives connected to these ports”.
Anyone got any ideas I’m tearing my hair out! Why can’t the bios see the two physical ports and why is it detecting two that aren’t there?