IDE connectors are used to connect the IDE devices such as hard disk, CD rom/writer, DVD rom/writer. Most motherboards have only 2 which can connect up to 4 different IDE devices. For this photo, you see 4 because the other 2 are RAID connectors. This is also the reason why I bought this motherboard. If you have ever tasted the speed of RAID, you probably have some ideas about why the standalone RAID cards can be that expensive. Well-known RAID manufacturers are Promise and HighPoint. Some high-end RAID cards can be as expensive as the whole computer system. And the connection mode is somewhat complicated (Raid 0 to Raid 5, actually more.). The commercial companies out there with large databases can not afford to be without. So much for RAID now, let's go back to IDE.

For the role of IDE connectors in PC, nothing special except the priority of device connection. For instance, one hard disk and one CD rom (or DVD rom) should be connected this way: HD to primary IDE in channel 1 and CD rom to primary IDE in channel 2. Never connect a CD / DVD writer as slave device in either channel 1 or channel 2. If you do so, you might often encounter "buffer underrun" situation when burning CD-R because "slave" channel can not offer consistent data flow as fluent as "primary" can. Besides, it is a good habit to check the jumper setting first for each of these devices before putting them into the computer case.

Hard disk does not need any driver to operate. However, if you are using Intel platform, don't forget to download something called "Intel Application Accelerator" that can dramatically increase the internal data transfer rate. Current version is 2.3. If you are using VIA chipset (most AMD machines, but don't mix things up with SIS, 2 different companies), the similar driver is called VIA 4-in-1, that can also greatly increase the speed of your hard disk. Current version is 4.46.