I just intalled a new motherboard D975XBX2 and it cannot detect the HDDs
I connected the DVD master and CD slave drives to the one IDE connector I have on the board.
I bought an IDE controler board for the two IDE Hard drives I have. One is a 40gig Western Digital (Original) Master
250gig Seagate (Just bought 1 month ago) Slave
I checked the controller card and it is seated properly in one of two PCI slots and the IDE cable to primary on the card is properly attached.
At the HDDs I rechecked the master and slave settings twice and they are ok
I have the ribbon cable end connector on Mater and the middle connector on slave, power is also connected properly.
Other things
1 The 40gig HDD still has Win XP on it
2 I put the CD in for the drivers on the IDE controler card and does not install.
3 I simple cannot find Auto detect in Bios it should be in Advanced but it is not there.
4 When it goes through its self examination a message comes up that the HDD is not detected.
I tried to reinstall Xp but it gets to a point where it is telling me that the HDD cannot be found
I am not sure where to take this can anyone please help
thanks

Have you tried putting the optical drives on the controller card and the hard-drives on the motherboard?

Another thing you could try is updating the BIOS. The IDE port on the motherboard is already a separate IDE controller - the southbridge has no IDE support at all - and this has given some people compatibility headaches. Adding another controller may make it worse. A BIOS update could fix this.