I've never been comfortable with what it told me, since I was sure at one time I had three IDE HD's in my machine. But last time I tried to add a third in, fortunately only to swap files, I was told by windows that it only allowed 2 IDE hard drives at any time. Which seems odd since they oughtn't differ except for write transfer to a CD device.
What I can only assume is it's something to do with the SP version I was on at the time (or lack of probably), since they were definitely in the right jumper setup, and I tried alternatives.
Anyway, screw IDE is all I can say now!
Asides: The news I don't know if was mentioned here but the furor over the use of slave and master in IDE specification? Despite it being described for that usage in the dictionary, and the fact that it's official standard terminology.
I forgot the other one.