SATA problem with Plextor 716sa

[GullyFoyle]

I have a Dell Dimension 8400, 3.4 processor and 3 gigs ram Winxpsp2. It has four SATA channels. The first is taken by the HDD that came with the system Sata 0. I then added a SATA2 Seagate to the Sata 1, and the Plextor 716sa to Sata 2. Everything was fine everything was recognized.
One day there was a problem with slow booting and the Seagate drive seemed not to be recognized on Sata 1 anymore. I swapped it to Sata 3. I thought it was either a bad drive, bad channel, or cable problem.
It works fine on Sata 3. Sata 1 is turned off in the bios.
I Installed Daemon tools 4.
Now My Plextor is recognized in the bios on Sata 2. The system recognizes it as an ide drive that I can burn to ( I have read that ide is the default driver).
But Plextools will not recognize it all. It recognizes the two hdds the original Philips ide drive and the Daemon tools virtual drive.
I have removed and reinstalled Plextools. No luck. I've unistalled the Plextor from device manager and turned off in the bios. After reinstall no luck.
Everything is up to date with bios and firmware.
The Dell bios is set to default. if I switch it to combined I lose two Sata channels.
I've googled and the best I can come up is a rumor that Sata 0 and 2 are HDD channels and the other optical.
Any ideas why Plextools doesn't recognize the drive?
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Happy Holidays!

[budz]

Post your question at the PLEXTOR FORUM at Cdfreaks.com. I'm sure the members there will help you out. From what I've read there the PLEXTOR 716 SATA drive had many problems.