Thanks for the reply. It is on the SATA-1 port. Both the cable and power are connected.

When I select Auto in the BIOS it says unknown device. Any idea?

Are you saying that I have to either move the SATA to 2 or my IDE to slave?

 

Thanks again

If your system currenty uses and IDE drive as the system drive( xp installed on it) and you want to add a sata hard drive to the Mix, you Will Have to install XP on that Sata drive.

 

The 4600 will Force you to Boot from the Sata drive if installed properly, I know it sounds silly, but this is a limitation of the bios. Nothing can be done about it.

 

Do you understand?

 

 

No you don't have to do a thing with the IDE drive. You need to get the bios to recognize the new drive, then you have to Install XP on that drive. Must be on Sata0 to install OS. Once XP is installed and drivers are installed, if needed, and updated using windows updates, then you can copy data off of the old drive. It will be seen in windows explorer as just another drive. When installing XP on the new drive, temporarily disconnect the old IDE drive during this procedure, or more problems will result.

 

Go here and find your model and follow the directions to reset the nvram

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_bios&message.id=41042

 

First make notes of All the settings currently in the bios as they will be cleared by this nvram process.

 

Then after clearing nvram the drive should be recognized, and then you will have to go thru the bios and check all settings, changing the ones that need to be, to match the ones you made notes on earlier.

Well I want to boot from the SATA, that's why I got it, so no problem there. So I need to move the IDE to slave, correct? I want to copy all contents from IDE to SATA (maybe). It just doesn't seem like the BIOS is seeing it.