Does the very same drive work in the A4000D or is it a different drive ?
What's the config ? Do you have a CSPPC or CSMK3 accelerator which has the option to disable the IDE bus ?
There are known issues with slow initialising drives which are only recognised after a reset. But this usually happens on Kickstart 3.0 and earlier, it shouldn't happen on Kick 3.1.
Bye,
Thomas