Pata slave drive not found in bios a05 of dell dimension 8400 but found in windows and linux os's

You should put the OS on an IDE drive. Then you can have the DVD player on an IDE controller. The SATA drives can be used for a RAID or a JBOD.

You can go into the bios and on those drives that are not found you can turn them OFF or N/A. They are probably set to AUTO or ON.

If that does not work I would say remove the power cord, remove the cover, then remove the main power to the motherboard then plug the main power to the motherboard back it. The main power will run from the power supply and the end of it will be about a 2 inch strip that plugs into the board. Press and hold the little catch on it then pull it out of the socket on the board. Put it back in firmly. Reboot and see what happens.

A) If you have the Restoration Disk (CD), or a full installation disk of the Windows operating system, the answer is yes.

B) If you have an image backup program, such as Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, or DriveImage XML, for example, the answer is yes.

The Windows operating system is copied over to the new harddrive.

It would be easier, and more cost effective to just install the 160GB harddrive as a Slave drive.

I don't know if your harddrive is an IDE (PATA) unit, or a SATA unit.

Here is more information on installing either an IDE harddrive, or a SATA harddrive, as a Slave drive in a desktop computer,

1) IDE {PATA} harddrive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inX3nC6M1E

1A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTOgt3UiB4


2) SATA harddrive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCgFYNLzn18&NR=1

IDE, also known as PATA is the older style of technology.
SATA is the newer style.

(Parallel ATA
Serial ATA )

The beauty of SATA is not only the faster speed, but if you connect a SATA cable (Data cable) to ANY SATA connector on the motherboard, BIOS will find the device.

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) will find the harddrive with the operating system on it, first.
Then it will recognize that you have a second SATA harddrive also.

(BIOS looks at both SATA harddrives.
When it finds the one with the operating system on it, BIOS will disregard the other SATA harddrive)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScqDZZeFK9I

For additional questions please post in a Comment.

Regards,
joecoolvette

During the boot process you will see on the screen to press a certain key to enter setup
Press and hold that key during the boot up process to enter BIOS the scroll down to advanced bios features press enter change your first boot device to cd,press escape then press f10 to save to cmos to restart
(note after you have loaded the operating system you must go back and change the first boot device to your hard drive)
The BIOS is AMI. Under ADVANCED SETUP:
The options listed for 1st,2nd ,3rd Boot device include:
IDE-0 means Pri master
IDE-1 means Pri slave
IDE-2 means Sec master
IDE-3 means Sec slave

Master/Slave designation is determined by jumpers on IDE drives. Most drives have adequate markings on them to identify these jumper positions. If not marked clearly, you will need the manufacturer's data to determine that designation.
If you are curious about a working system just power-up in set-up mode (usually by depressing (f1-or-f2) during boot-up sequence, your system-bios will display this information for you.

did you format the drive? sometimes it won't show up until you format the drive.

Is this conected to the motherboard vis sata or (ide)pata?If sata did you put it in the correct port and if so is it enabled.Secondly if ide or pata is the port enabled in the bios or do you have a second device attached to it.If using ide pata one drive should be master or slave ,,, or cable select.
These are the answers why it might not work.The last answer is it died,but i think this is the least likely answer.
good luck

Normally you would set it up to boot from:
1. CD/DVD drive
2. Hard Drives

There may also be a floppy drive to add in whereever you want it.
This problem sound like some kind of drive controller or the drives are not being recognized in BIOS...check and make sure you see the hard drives when setting the boot order.

I am assuming that the cd and DVD drives are on the Ide right ?? thats because one of the drives jumper is set wrong. If you take a look at the back you will find it saying master / slave / Cable select with eighter a 6 to 10 pins. basically one needs to be set to master and connected with the top piece of the cable and the other set to slave and connected with the middle of the cable. and the other jacks into the main board. If i misunderstood you please respond correcting me as soon as possible so i can be of further help.

set the hard drive to master and the dvd to slave

I'm sorry, but I couldn't wade through this bunch responses, so I'm going to give you my own.

You have 2 sata drives installed, already, so you cannot add an additional one w/o a bunch of wonky adapters, so use the IDE channel. You say you have an IDE rom drive. Well, there's a reason there are 3 connections on an IDE cable. One side goes into the motherboard, the other 2 into your drives. The motherboard side is the one furthest away from the center connector. I assume you have the primary connector connected to your rom drive. the 2ndary one would be on your hdd. Why people asked you why you're doing this is beyond me. It works, you'll have an extra drive, your preference. Whatever.

Let me know if you have any more inquiries.

To answer your questions from your original post directly, the other 'ide' channel is specifically for a floppy disk You CANNOT connect an IDE cable to it. And yes, you can connect an  hdd to the slave port on the ide cable.