pci ide controller, anyone set one of these mothers up?

[luvvbuzz]

hi,
i just got myself a pci ide controller made by innovision. its raid version. ok, previously i just had my 2 hard drives 40gb and 30gb along with my cdrw and another dvd+rw drives all on the two channels on my motherboard. i figured if i got extra ide channels it may speed my burning of cds up when i copy on the fly and stuff.
basically i would like every one of my 4 ide devices to have there own channel. hence the pci ide raid card with two extra channels on it.
the instructions i got with it are pi** poor, you know what i am saying? just a small 2 page booklet with not much on it and half of what is on it is warranty crap!
anyway, can i just get 4 ide leads and plug each one of my devices into a separate ide channel then boot the computer up and away i go?
or is there alot of hassle to get through before i can use the extra ide channels?
if anybody knows how to set these thing up please let me know, as i would be very grateful for your help.

[RabidDog]

plug n play ..... then hope n pray .. should be that simple.

[BJ_M]

it will not speed up burning any ... you should leave your boot drive where it is (unless you want to go through a lot of hassle possably)..

plug your second hard drive and cd and dvd in controller and when you boot up you should see them after main bios screen (maybe) .


you dont have really enough to set up a raid ..

[luvvbuzz]

i got told it would speed up burning due to separate channels of the drives. so you say leave my boot drive (c drive) where it is as the primary ide on the motherbaord. so then i can leave my dvdrw drive as the secondary ide on the motherboard and connect the cdrw and thew slave hdd to the pci ide controller? would that sound like an ok setup?
i will set it up tomorrow as its late here and im off to bed.
people talk about raid, and i was told to make sure i get an ide controller with raid, and i did, but i dont know what raid is and what it does. but people seem to rate it highly!
thanks for your replies.

[luvvbuzz]

if i just use 4 separate ide cables, one for each device is that ok?

[redwudz]

A few tips about PCI IDE cards. Don't mix slow devices (DVD, CD drives) on the same channel as high speed devices (Hard drives). Not all PCI IDE cards will work with slow devices. If it says it will work with CD drives, etc., you should be OK. You will probably have to install the driver on the included disk. Most RAID cards will work as a regular IDE card. Raid takes a minimum of two IDE drives, perferably matched. Yes, you can set each device as master or cable select and run one cable to each. If you want more information on RAID, do a Google search.