Need help w/ upgrading to Gigabyte GA-8I945P Pro motherboard

Hey everyone. My old motherboard took a dump a few weeks ago and figured it would be a great time to upgrade my entire computer. Basically new processor, motherboard, ram, and video card. I selected the gigabyte board and I'm having a problem here and hoped someone would be able to help.

I have two dvd-r drives and two hard drives. The hard drives are western digital drives, 80gb and 120gb. I have a lot of files stored on these drives such as pictures, video, and mp3s that I am not interested in losing at all. The problem I'm having is that the computer will boot off the hard drive if I put it on IDE channel 1, but not 2 or 3. Actually, if I put the hard drive on IDE channel 2, the BIOS does not recognize it. Subsequently, WindowsXP setup does not recognize the hard drives unless they are on channel 1. I did notice however that the RAID controller recognizes the hard drives.

I entered the RAID setup and see that I can use the JABD option, but will have to format my drives. When I select IDE interface, it says I have 2 unused drives, but I don't know how to just leave it as IDE. It says it saves it and creates a new array, but I don't see it.

Overall, I just want to use the RAID controller as an IDE controller right now, simply because I don't have a place to backup all this data. Is there a way to use the RAID controller as a straight IDE controller, or do I have to convert my drives? Thanks in advance.