2nd hard drive unrecognized

I have a Dell Optiplex 745, dual Pentium CPU 3 GHz, 6GB RAM, 32-bit, VISTA Business, SP2, a DVD drive but only a 75GB hard drive.

I installed a 180GB SATA hard drive. If I pull the cable from the DVD drive that goes into the SATA 2 socket on the mother board and plug in the second HD there, the machine will recognize the 2nd HD. (I formatted 2nd HD in this configuration, so it does work.) If I plug in the DVD drive at SATA 4 or 5, it won't see the DVD but it will see 2nd HD. If I return the DVD cable to SATA 2 and plug 2nd HD into either SATA 4 or 5 the computer will recognize the DVD drive but not the 2nd HD.

I've tried to get into BIOS by hitting F2 at start up, but it won't go to BIOS.

Any suggetions?
Thank you,
Mark

 

Wait for the dell splash screen and quickly press f2 multiple times till you see a response. If you miss the window (timewise) try another time. Do not hold the f2 key down.

 

Tried the F2 key repeatedly - sometimes this LogiTech keyboard is too much for its own good. I normally have it on a KVM switch with an old Mac OS9. I also tried plugging it straight into the PC with the same results.

I am curious about what you're growing this time of year in FLA. I'm in N. KY and the growing season is about over. Still, I'm a plant lover from a long line - my uncle is 91 and still enjoys puttering in his nursey for 60 years now.

 

Right now we are looking for the sweet potatoes to come in. Also the citrus trees should be done by Thanksgiving. Now is a good time to put in greens and such down here. Maybe one more planting of green beans. They'll grow almost anywhere here.

Do these hd's and dvd have jumpers for slave or master or cable select? Someone else may know if multiple sata's should be cable select.

 

re post- edit/delete

 

Out of curiosity I went looking and found a couple things. No jumpers for regular use but I did see where getting into BIOS is required for several situations. One search led me to dell support forum and it seems some dells come with a secure boot enabled and maybe a 2nd controller disabled by default. Either case requires bios access. Here's a link to the discussion.

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19520798

Have you gotten into bios yet?
Funny thing I found I have 2 controllers in device manager and 4 ports but only 1 listing in bios for enable/disable.