Dell Studio 1737 - Problems installing second HDD

Hello.

Let me start by saying I wouldn't normally do something like this to a brand new laptop considering I'm not too good with the back end of computers.. but here's the problem I have.

I got a 320GB notebook hdd from Western Digital (WD3200BEVTRTL) in December but was unable to get it to work in my laptop. It didn't work because the new drive is SATA II and the old laptop SATA controller was SATA I and unfortunately I couldn't dumb-down the new disk to work on that computer.

Anyway, for my bday I got a Dell Studio 1737 Intel Core 2 Duo T9550, 2.66GHz, 4GB Ram, 250 GB 7200RPM SATA hdd and it's running Vista. (Let me know if you need any other info about the new comp.) I called the people at Dell before buying to make sure I could use the HDD I already have as a second drive with the new computer. They said it would.

So I got my new laptop this morning (woooohooo! ). I booted up the new laptop and made sure everything was working as I ordered. Then I tried to install the second HDD and BIOS won't even recognize it.

I know the hdd isn't DOA as I was able to get it to recognize on the old laptop BIOS. I'm at a total loss for what to do. Any help, advise, whatever would be fantastic.

Thanks for your help Mr Evil and Sakor.

It is occasionally recognized in Windows and by BIOS. I was actually able to format it and assign it a drive number once. But the next time I started up the computer, it wasn't there again. I finally figured out what the problem was (see below)..

After reading your post Mr Evil, I took a closer look at the second hdd when it was in place. It seems that because the caddy I have isn't exactly to Dell's specs, it doesn't hold the drive in place as well as it should. It lifts a little less than 1cm over the mb prongs once I turn the computer right-side-up again. I found a caddy made especially for the Studio 17 series on Dells site. (I know, I should've looked there first, but I already had a caddy and thought it might work. Obviously I was wrong.) My problem comes down to an $11 part. Now I'm just waiting for it to show up on my doorstep Hopefully this will solve my problem.

Oh - on another note, the one time I did get the drive in and formatted, it was recognized as Drive 0. The comp booted to the OS on my primary drive prior to the second drive being formatted, and on next boot, the second drive wasn't recognize (it lifted off the mb again). I'm wondering.. once I have the right caddy and the second hdd is in place, do I need to worry about it being recognized as disk 0 even though I don't want it to be my primary?