HDD performance problem, possibly IDE channel related

Hi all - I recently purchased and installed a Seagate Ultra-ATA hard drive (120 GB, 7200 rpm) in an EMachines with a 2.6 GHz processor, 256 MB RAM, and a Western Digital 80 gig drive as the main boot drive.

From the beginning, my new drive has been plagued by slow performance. Last night, I was copying LPs to the new drive through my soundcard. My audio software took the data into temp storage on my master drive with no trouble, but then required over a minute to save the file to my new drive (compared with 10-15 seconds on the main boot drive.) Furthermore, mp3 playback from this drive has been slow and "choppy" - I'm hearing a significant number of small clicks, lags and silences.

I've checked my jumper settings on the drives (which share a cable to the same IDE controller on the motherboard), and they are correct; I've also ensured the absence of kinks in the data cable. (Also, the same mp3s play normally when copied to my C: drive, so I've eliminated corrupted files/storage as an issue.)

I did notice, however, that my computer thinks the new drive (F is a slave on the *secondary* IDE channel, rather than a slave on the primary... even though it shares a cable and controller with the primary master, i.e. my original HDD. The primary slave is D:, my CD/DVD-R, and the secondary master is E:, my DVD-RW (installed aftermarket, replacing a factory CD-RW unit.) Could this IDE confusion be the cause of my problem? How might I go about fixing it? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Thanks for the suggestion - I'm just about to try it. Before I do so... I just realized that I forgot to mention something even weirder. Windows detects the drive, but BIOS doesn't (!?!)

Windows sees my IDE channel configuration as:
Primary Master - original 80 gig HDD
Primary Slave - DVD-R
Secondary Master - DVD-RW
Secondary Slave - new 120 gig HD

BIOS, however, tells this story:
Primary master - original 80 gig HDD
Primary slave - none
Secondary master - DVD-R
Secondary slave - DVD-RW

Your suggestion of a cabling issue makes sense... I just want to make sure that this new information doesn't change the solution, before I proceed.