[Hoppster]

I have two - almost identical hard drives and two cd-rom drives

Hard drives are EIDE Western digital caviar 200gb
One is an 8mb cache WDC2000JB (special edition)
the other is a 2mb cache WDDC2000BB

Question
What is the best set up
a) Have both hdd drives on onecable and both dvd rws on one cable
b) Have the hdds on a separate ide cable each, with the dvds set as slaves.

It would be very awkward to set up option b as the HDD Bays are far from the DVD bays
Ive currently (a) set up, with no problems. The 8mb cache special edition benchmarks slightly slower than the 2mb one (87mb/s vs 91)

Would a raid set up be good, as ive heaps of storage.
Can I use a software Raid, or do I need an adaptor.
(the mobo does not have onboard raid, i dont think)

On the mobo, the first ide socket is Blue, the other is white. What does this mean?

Its a K8T800 mobo, made by NEC (Packard bell)

Or is raid not worth bothering about?

Any guidance would be appreciated.