Am getting more than a little tired of my firewire drives getting "lost" under Linux, particularly since two of them are part of a RAID 5 array. When the array gets under heavy usage, it's not uncommon for the drive to "disappear", and then I have to do a lot of power cycles and cord unplug/plugs to get Linux to notice the drive or drives again.

So, I'm trying to figure out what my other options might be.

One thought, since my case has a couple open drive bays, would be to add a PCI-board IDE controller card. But since the motherboard already has built-in controllers, I'm a little concerned whether having 4 channels rather than 2 is going to be recognized.

Also thought that maybe USB2 would be an option, but I can't seem to find much information out there that would tell me if I'm just changing problems rather than fixing them.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

I would go with an IDE controller or if your willing to spend the extra money go SCSI. IMO neither USB nor Firewire is designed for being a RAID array and I suspect your going to have the same problem with USB. Check the Hardware compatibility List for PCI IDE controllers.