Heres the thing quickly - It may help someone
I got a new P4 256meg ram
total hard drive space = 200 gig from 3 physical drives
also 1 DVD burner which filled the allocation of the IDE ports.
Put the last drive in and had problems with speed of the drive.
bechtesting revealed that it compared slower than a really cheap drive at a scale of 4 ... mines showed 3!!!!
usual probs like dropped frames etc..
The ... Checked the Bios :lol:
Found that the IDE cable running to the drive was 40 conductor
The one running to the other 2 drives was an 80 conductor
took the 2 cables and compared them .. YEP seemed as if the ribbons were different so I changed them
TARAH !!!! perfect - drive now benchmarks ( instead of 3 ) 62 !!!
Moral ; Dunno - just had to ell someone !!!

Joe[/b]