Hey,
 
 
 
I've had my system running with one sata 250gb (western digital), and one ide 250gb (segate) for just over a year now without any real problems beside having to find a really long ide ribbon cable (whatever the official name is),
 
So I went and bought a new 640gb w.d. hdd yesterday (as well as a second 1g 667 ram stick to go with the one i had which installed without problems or changing of bootup speed before the hdd business -- didnt have a data cable at first for the new sata so i had to wait)
 
The idea was, to remove the IDE drive, and have two sata drives
As such i had to move the data from the ide to the new sata, so i plugged in one of the sata powercables to the new drive (all power has been on the molex cables till now) and connected it tothe motherboard in one of the available sata connection points,.. meanwhile i didnt interfere with anything else, so i left the drive stable and safe just next to the computer,
 
 
bios, windows,  picked the new drive up fine,
initalised it, quick format for ntfs, it was all looking good,  nothing changed
having copied the data, I powered down the computer,
 
disconnected the IDE drive, disconnected the original sata's molex power cable, physicaly switched the ide with the new sata, screwed it in, reconnected the power/data cable, and connected the original sata to the same sata power cable (So i didnt have as many cables inside..), doublecheckd all the cables, put the case side back on .. (unfortunately the cpu needs the fan attached to the side of the case ), powerd up,..
 
*yawn*
 
why is this taking so much longer to boot up?!?
*ponder*
 
 
I glanced over some forums trying to find something but nothing great stood out,
I thought maybe it was the page file, so i returned the page file to system managed, rebooted etc
no change (to the bootup speed)
 
 
being it was almost 1am i went to bed instead
 
 
 
So today, i turn it on, see its still the same,
I figure, theres going to be no harm if i put in the molex power cable i took out and connect it to the old sata,..  
so now they have seperate power cables for the two drives (only, fans optical etc on a seperate molex)
 
Still no change
 
 
So, anyone have an ideas/suggestions how i can fix this?
 
(if you skipped the text in the middle, while i had my old sata+ide, it was fine, old sata+ide+new sata, it was fine (not sure if i rebooted after init'ing the new drive tho...),   when i removed the ide, just had the 2 sata's ,.. it boots Sllloww in comparison)
 
 
oh, not sure if this means anything else, but now when i turn the computer off, there is a distinct half a sec around about after hearing parts turning off, and the computer power going off..
 
 
thanks (:
 
 
 
Edit::
 
I have since tried disconnecting the new hdd, and the dvd drive (in seperate attempts),  
so with just a floppy and the old original hdd, it *still* boots/shutsdown incredibly slow now
 
What would cause this after installing a brand new hdd and/or then removing one of the others??  
 (and no the second drive, the one i removed, *was* used for the windows page file but i reset that to the C drive before i even bought the new drive, otherwise it was purely file storage .. no programs accessing at all on loadup etc)

Did you change the bios to not look for an IDE drive?  IE: disable that ide connection.  Note if you have an IDE dvd drive don't disable it.
Have you tried putting the ide drive back in to see if the computer returns to normal?

hmm I'll have a look again in the bios, but i dont remember seeing anything,
 
and no, the only thing i can think of that i havent tried yet, is putting the drive back
 
my brother suggested last night when igot home from work to try look into the dma/pio
so i thought maybe that was it ,..  
But i've renamed the registry entry(ies) as i found in one guide to make it redetermine etc etc, i've even uninstalled the three channels
this morning I even changed which connector the new drive is connected to, now both hdd's (presuming its them) are listed in the one primary channel,  rather than one in the secondary (device mngr->IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers-->primary ide channel etc)
 
presuming those are the hdd's, they are both at udma5, and hte dvd drive at udma 4,
 
 
 
 
I'll go have a look at the bios, if i dont see anything, ill hopefuly find connecting the old ide isnt as hard as it used to be (cords not long enough etc to have outside the pc)

didnt see anything in the bios to disable the IDE/tell it not to look for one..
 
It's picked up all the drives correctly in the bios each time so..  
 
yeah well anyway, I now have my orignal sata, and the IDE hdd connected,
the new sata is not,      
I again tried uninstalling the channels etc to try to "reset" it ,..  
 
no change
 
 
 
one thing i did notice,
when i inserted the ide, before removing the new sata,  
i went to change the new sata drive letter to something not S ,. (what i've always used as the second drive,   s for storage ) just incase something was trying to access it for no reason etc,
 
but it took ages to change the drive letter for the new sata
 
 
any other ideas/suggestions/ things to try??