I have recently bought a standard 3.5 IDE hard drive made by IBM. however, I cannot get it work with my Amiga. What am I doing wrong?

IBM hard drives have a history of not working with the Amiga. There is a solution but it requires cutting one of the wires on the hard drive cable. If you feel that you cannot do this simply return the hard drive to wherever you bought it. If you damage your hard drive it is your own fault and I take no responsibility for it.

Still here?

The trick is to cut the first wire on the IDE cable. The IBM drives do not spin up fast enough to work properly. You will not be able to boot from cold (i.e. when you have just switched the computer on), only when doing a warm reset (pressing Ctrl and two Amiga keys).