PowerEdge 600SC - Using Third IDE channel.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 600SC 1.8Ghz P4 machine (probably with 400Mhz FSB, but not sure...)

IDE1 has two hard-disks (setup for Dual XP/Linux boot)

IDE2 has 1 DVD-ROM, 1 DVD-RW drive

IDE3 has two Maxtor hard-disks (newly installed)

When I boot into XP and run MaxBlast to install the two new hard-disks, the MaxBlast software fails to recognize them. I have changed the BIOS setting to Auto (from Off) for the third IDE channel settings.

I searched on this forum and found a post which mentioned that third IDE only supports ATA-66 and can be used for CD/DVD drives or backup drives. I have couple of questions on how to configure the two new hard-disks so that they are recognized by the system.

1. Is it possible to have the two hard-disks attached to third IDE and operate at ATA-66 or PIO mode? (I don't know what PIO really means) I don't mind if they operate slowly...

2. If I move the new hard-disks to IDE channel 2 and the DVD drives to channel 3, will that degrade the performance of the DVD drives (will burning DVDs take longer or be less reliable)?

I would appreciate any alternate configurations that might make these components work together.

TIA.