First make sure your bios is set up properly. I would set everything at auto if possible (With relation to the drive setups) Alternatively make sure LBA is enabled & make sure you are set up in Mode 4. Your idea of using seperate busses is a good one but you do not mention if there are other drives such as CDRom or DVD hooked up with them on the bus. If no, then you should get maximum throughput on IDE 0 & IDE 1. I run (usually) 6 drives in my system and even on my External ACOM I get much higher speeds than you are getting. The type of files you are trying to transfer also make a big difference. If you transfer a lot I would recommend you get a shareware utility called "PC Opus" in my humble opinion it is possibly the best file transfer utility ever written. It also does a variety of othe tasks as well. Just type PC Opus into google & you will find sites where it is available. You might also want to try setting your Bios to Optimal or Default & see if that helps. One other item that has the ability to slow down transfer rates is Viruses. I would Recommend Norton 2002 You can download a free 30 day trial at
www.symantec.com if you don't already have it.
Best of Luck to you!
My System:
SuperCase Full Tower
4 each 80 Gig Maxtor 7200 RPM ATA133 Drives (320 Gig Raid Array)
1 each 80 Gig Maxtor 7200 RPM Boot Drive
1 Each ACOM External (For File Transfer & Backup) 60 Gig (USB 2 & Firewire Connect)
3 each 512Meg Hynix PC2700 DDR 333 Ram (1.5 Gig)
ABIT AT7 Max Motherboard
SounBlaster Audigy Platinum
A+ GPB 500 Watt Power Supply
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV 64 Meg
JVC SVHS HR-S5400U For Video Editing
AMD XP2000+ Processor W/PentAlpha APSK0169B Heatsink & Fan
2 each-SNT Hot-Swap Mobile Racks
Plextor 40/12/40A CDRW
Sony 16X DVD
KDS Avitron 19" True Flat Monitor
Olympus D-40 Zoom 4 Megapixel Digital Camera
HP-1200 LaserJet Printer
Epson Stylus PHOTO 785EPX Color InkJet Printer 2880 DPI
PrimaScan 2400U USB Scanner
Logitech Cordless Optical Mouse
Lite-On Surfboard Wireless Keyboard
WindowsXP Professional