Hello, i recently bought a Asus M2N32 WS Pro nForce 590 SLi (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard and im having a bit of trouble getting the hard drive and the dvd drive working at the same time.

The hard drive is IDE 200gb.

I can only get one device working at one time. I thought this might be because it will support only SATA hard drives?

Im not sure. please help!

(i have tried a HD with pre-installed xp and a HD with no data- none are different results)

How do you currently have them cabled?

They are cabled as it should be, and are in the right ports.

in the bios, it shows many ports where a SATA hard drive can be located. i was thinking maybe if i used a SATA HD, it would work? as the only way i can get the IDE hd working is when it is set as the primary IDE which the DVD drive needs to be to work.

bios looks a bit like this:
Primary IDE: Sony DVD RW
Slave IDE: Auto
SATA:
SATA:
SATA:
SATA:
SATA:
SATA:

i think maybe thie mobo is designed to run sata hd? as it can support so many.

SATA as i know does not require any jumper settings and is auto detect (PNP). Are you able to see you HDD in the BIOS apart from DVD RW under IDE devices?

i can only see the HDD in the bios if i switch the cable from the DVD RW, but then the DVD RW will not be located in the bios.

So you basically mean that when you swap your connection from DVD RW to HDD using the same SATA cable, then you are able to see your HDD under BIOS, but the HDD is not visible when you attach it to a separate SATA cable. If so then either your second SATA cable or second SATA controller is failing.

Ok, here are some pictures:

ImageShack - Hosting :: dsc000551ty.jpg
ImageShack - Hosting :: dsc000561em.jpg
ImageShack - Hosting :: dsc000573jg.jpg
ImageShack - Hosting :: dsc000591lh.jpg

The first image is the bios when the DVD drive is plugged in using the port shown in the second picture
the next picture shows where the HDD is plugged in at this time.

the last picture shows the bios after i switch around the cables for the HDD and disk drive.