SIIG UltraATA 100 RAID card is SLOW!!!

EPOX 8K3A mobo with
ATI 8500DV
1.5GB ram
SBlive
3COM NIC

40 Maxtor (5400rpm) (IDE 1)
80 Maxtor (7200rpm)

LiteOn CDRW (IDE 2)
LG DVD

WinXP pro (all updates)
===== :rolleyes: ======Problem Description===== :rolleyes: ======
On the SIIG UltraATA 100 RAID I have two 80 GB maxtor (7200rpm) drives each one on a dif. channel. When I tell the card to strippe them, it does so just fine and when I boot into winXP I see a 159GB HD.

My read speeds at best are, 10-15MB/s and write speeds are at best 8 megs a sec.

When I unstripped them and ran them as normal, the drives don't speed up much but do run a little faster.

When I use a Maxtor ATA100 card and have windows strippe them, my speeds are 34 read and 50+ write. They should be faster since each drive does 20+write and 30+ read. And suggestions on how on either setup I could speed things up.

Maxtor ATA is a Promise ATA card and it doesn't have any raid functions.
SIIG UltraATA 100 RAID and yes both cards are using the latest drivers yet the Promise card seems to do better with the microsoft drivers.

thanks and sorry for the long post.... Please ask if you need more details...