Hooking up cables to Mobo 1

[Lotuponacast]

Hi!, I'm brand new...and perplexed...Have the makings of a DAW (I would Hope!), but the initial cabling, etc. has me in a quandary...I bought used a Lian Li P60USB case, an abit IS7 Mobo; a P4 2.6 Northwood CPU; an HP300i DVDRW and Three WD Caviar HDs: WD2500, WD1000BB and WD1000JB...And so here I am...Right now, with two of the HDs out and sitting on my bed and wondering how the hell am I going to get this right???
My initial questions are extremely plebian, but please bear with me...When it comes to software, etc. I can handle my self, but this Hardware has my bewildered...Firstly, the three hard drives are neatly placed in a removable HD tray at the bottom of the case...They are EIDEs...How should I cable them to the Mobo...My thought is to Master the 250G and slave an 100???...That can be done rather readily...When i first opened the case I noticed that the Power thingamagig was hooked into the 250 with a shorter off shoot power (Molex) adapter coming from it to the adjacent 100G HD...The jumpers are set master and slave on the two drives in question...but that's where the honeymoon ends...The third drive is jumpered PM2 (????) whatever that means, and the DVD drive is way up at the top of the case, much more than 6 inches away...I have no idea how to set up these other two drives...I don't even know if I need the third HD.
I now have the idea of a separate EIDE controller (Promise, or such) flying around in my head and the entire electrical layout is becoming preposterous...
My idea is to set the 250 as master and adjacent 100 as slave on the first set (channel) of IDE pins...Now the IS7 is RAID worthy and with this I'm lost...I don't know how or what to do to set these two up in RAID, or if I should do this at all...
I also think that I'm going to have to remove the third HD and place it up in the case closer to the DVD drive, right???...and then how do I set these as far as Master slave is concerned, and what of this no more than an 18 inch cable???Phhhweeee

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know I'm Willy the Dunce in this arena, but I need some concrete plug it in there type advise or I'll never get to the micing, mixing, EQing in this DAW...My Lord, I'd sure appreciate some help!
Thanks ever-so-much in advance,
Jim
PS. I've got Sata cables and other paraphenalia that came in the Motherboard box also, if that's of any consequence

 

[kestrel1]

If you haven't got SATA drives you wont need the SATA cables. Personally I would have purchased SATA hard drives if the board is SATA enabled. Still never mind.
You say that the board is RAID worthy. I suspect that the raid array will only work with the SATA drives, but I could be wrong. I haven't looked at the spec for the mobo.
I would set the drives as follows:
1) 250gb Master on IDE channel 1
2) 100gb Slave on IDE channel 1
3) DVD Master on IDE channel 2
4) 100gb slave on IDE channel 2
be aware that the third HDD's speed will reduce to the slowest device on the channel (DVD drive)
When jumpering the drives, use cable select if you have 80 wire IDE cables. If not use Master with Slave for the master drives.
If the cable will not reach between the DVD & HDD then move the HDD to the top of the caddy & move the DVD drive down in the case. Unless you can get a longer cable.
Using a PCI IDE expansion card is also an option. I have one on my system, because I use three HDD's & two DVD/DVD-rw drives.
I would put the third HDD on this controller if you decide to get on, as you won't be able to boot from the DVD if it is connected to a PCI IDE card.