Got an odd problem. Recently installed a new Western digital SATA drive to my system. Its a WD640AALS Black edition. No problems with the drive but a few times a week my 2ndary IDE drives disappear. I have a WD Cavaiar 80gb/ 8mb 7200 drive and Seagate 200Gb/ 8mb 7200 drive on the only IDE channel available and last week I saw the Seagate dissappear ....and the USB/REMOVABLE DEVICE UNPLUGGED message popped up.... but today... I saw....BOTH IDE drives disappear. They were there on boot and working for hours....then I tried to save and got a DELAYED WRITE ERROR and realized the drives were gone. The SATA WD640 Boot drive continued working with no problem. I was in the middle of doing things and was able to get around using the IDE drives so I didnt reboot until a few hrs later and continued working on the WD640. After Reboot....the IDE drives showed up again. This is a fresh windows build and is the first time Ive used a SATA drive on this system. Ive had this model motherboard for around a year now but this specific board is a RMA replacement I got around December after the main board had a no video issue. I hadnt tried a SATA HDD on that board either so I dont know if theres a bios bug...or something else going on. I HAVE HOWEVER been using a SATA DVD/RW drive since I got the first DS3L board and still am without incident. Tried changing IDE cables and power connections are tight. PSU is fine. System is not overclocked. All drives test fine with diagnostics and benchmark to spec with HDTune. I've heard stories of SATA and IDE drives not playing nicely but why an intermitten issue and is there any work around...or is the board or bios buggy? Anyone have an issue with this board...or any ideas? Thanks Dave

What happens, when you plug off completely the second hdd? Did you have the same problem after a few hours? Please send a reply, if you solved the problem !!!

Not sure I understand you. The Primary SATA (boot) drive continues to function with or without the IDE drives. Are you asking what happens if I unplug one of the IDE drives from the IDE cable? If so...I havent tried that yet but I doubt its a hard drive malfunction since they all passed diagnostics and benchmarks individually. Also....in case you were wondering....this isnt a raid setup.