Problem with adding second HDD

I am trying to add a HDD to an HP a1603n (Dual Core AMD-64, 2 Gb RAM, 250 Gb HDD installed, dual boot with Windows XP). The drive to be added is an a Barracuda and is on the second IDE, master position (end of cable); the installed 250 Gb Drive is a SATA connection, and the DVD drive is on the first IDE channel master position. I used this arrangement based on what I read at:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/fastFaqLiteDocument?lc=en&cc=uk&dlc=en&docname=bph03792
on setup for a 2 HDD, one optical drive configuration. Windoze XPs diskmgmt.msc script does not recognize the 2nd HDD at all, though the setup program in the BIOS recognizes it and gives it the correct parameters. Booting from the SimplyMEPIS64 6.04-1 Beta live CD, the system comes up (very slowly with several error messages of the following type:

Buffer I/O error on device hddd, logical block 0
ACPI: PC1 interrupt link [APCF] enabled at IRQ xx
hddd: dma_timer_expiry: dma status ==0x41
hddd: dma_intr_status 0x51 {DriveSeekCompleteError}
etc.

QTParted did not recognize the new HDD (list it as one of the available drives, not yet allocated).

After searching for clues, I followed the advice of john-m in the following thread and downloaded GParted to work the cranky second HDD. http://www.mepis.org/node/12168 However, like Beau, the originator of that topic, I have more than a little trouble with following the documentation for GParted. I did burn the GParted live CD and it boots fine and, after a lot of scan time, even finds my 2nd HDD with the appropriate drive parameters and size. However, when I try to resize this unallocated drive and break it up into root, swap, and home partitions, GParted balks on the disk label. No matter what label type I choose, it demands a new label, gives an error message that it is unable to assign an msdos lable or a loop label (the only two options I have tried), and then drops back to into rescan mode. I have not been able to locate the "repair" function in GParted that Beau referred to in one of his posts, though I have downloaded and/or read the online documentation.

Does anyone have some better ideas? I am rapidly running out of ideas and need an outside opinion. I don't think I am a complete Linux novice; been running MEPIS for a little over two years, but I keep discovering how much more there is to learn.

Does anyone have any suggestions?