Taurus - It's very difficult to FDISK and Format a drive that the controller on the motherboard does not recognize as being present.
Check and then double check your cables. Reversed cables happen - even to the best of us.
(remember, the stripe on the cable is pin 1 and is generally on the side closest to the drive power connector.)
Try a different I/O cable -
Check your bios settings - It might be that the controller is disabled -
Try the other controller connector - might be that the primary controller is out to lunch - don't know that you could boot from the second IDE but if the drives are recognized that points at the Primary IDE as being the problem.