Hard Disks
The BIOS gives several choices for configuring the SATA drives

When the machine briefly had Windows XP MCE installed it recognised the "fake" RAID devices (provided it had suitable drivers installed), and obviously it recognised them as legacy IDE drives, however it didn't detect the disks when they were configured in AHCP mode. FOr a while I then installed FC4 on one of the disks.

Since this is a test box at the moment I decided to go with AHCI, the FC5T1 kernel recognised the drives properly and they are named /dev/sda than /dev/hda. I did some tests with hdparm to check the throughput 
[root@localhost ~]# hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   4536 MB in  2.00 seconds = 2267.86 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  176 MB in  3.00 seconds =  58.58 MB/sec
It is quite useful to be able to force the drives into standby mode to judge the amount of vibration noise they genrate. 
[root@localhost ~]# hdparm -y /dev/sda -y /dev/sdb

/dev/sda:
 issuing standby command

/dev/sdb:
 issuing standby command
The drives hame smart enabled and can be interrogated 
[root@localhost ~]# smartctl -d ata -a /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.33 [i386-redhat-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-4 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:     WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0
Serial Number:    WD-WMANK1399835
Firmware Version: 02.01C03
User Capacity:    250,059,350,016 bytes
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:   7
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Thu Nov 24 22:12:34 2005 GMT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
See vendor-specific Attribute list for marginal Attributes.

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                        was completed without error.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                 (7680) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (  90) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   6) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   253   205   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       2291
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       61
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       710
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   253   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012   100   253   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       59
190 Unknown_Attribute       0x0022   037   001   045    Old_age   Always   FAILING_NOW 63
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   087   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       63
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0009   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%       704         -
# 2  Short offline       Completed without error       00%       701         -
# 3  Short offline       Completed without error       00%        79         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.