I can not tell you if the drive will run on your Motherboard controller with a capacity with more than 137 GB since I do not know the make and model (and even if you post it I can't guarantee I'll be back to read it).
Your motherboard controller MIGHT be able to use the full capacity of drives larger than 137 GB , I advise you to do a check on your motherboard specifications...
With respect to raid you do (as SYAR2003 imply) get best speed if you on a 2 drive raid configuration use only one drive per channel (one on each cable) and then setup the raid array as striped.
With your processor and a modern drive you might be able to record video on just one drive with a good result.
But use atlest one DEDICATED drive for video recording. This means put your O.S. on ONE PHYSICAL drive and record your video to ANOTHER PHYSICAL drive - meaning two different partitions on 1 drive won't do!
If you wan't to use a raid then use the raid drives as target for recording. and use another drive for O.S. and boot.
With a P4-1700MHZ you should have sufficent power to record video - depending on if you compress the video while you record or if not , and if you compress then depending on how hard you compress.
I've tried several ways of recording video and only one way satisfied ME. After spending money on more solutions I ended up buying a Pinnacle Studio Deluxe that records from an external source . If you want to record from TV then get Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8 (
)plus an external source to record from , an old S-VHS video machine that got both S-VHS and audio out is a perfect solution. That way you can use the video machine as a tuner and get a good resolution of picture as source to record from . The Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8 got both analog and digital video in and out ! and audio in and out. Only set back is that it'll set you back maybe AROUND $400 (I do not know prices where you are) . The Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8 allows you to record video at AROUND 14GB per hour (FOURTEEN GB!!!!)and compress later to MPEG. TIP: with respect to connecting the Pinnacle Studio Deluxe 8 breakout box to videomachine I had to to connect both the videomachines video outputs to the breakout box to get color in any case , this means that I connected bot the S-VHS cable and the CVBS (through scart) , anyway should you have any problems I'm sure Pinnacle will help you - I didn't bother to contact them about this - perhaps I just used a bad cable (?)
I myself use a 2 drive raid configuration as target for videorecording.
If you wish a cheaper solution for TV-recording of lesser quality then go Pinnacle PCTV Pro (
) , good product as well (however misses MPEG cut tool) . I can guarantee that "Pinnacle Sys" delivers products that is better than average - plus at a reasonable price too.
Regards