Connecting Hard drives

I have an internal controller card, which I have always used to connect optical drives, but from what I just read:

Today, the best way of providing support for up to eight IDE/ATA devices (four channels) is through the addition of one of these PCI-based cards. Doing so allows you the use of four channels, while taking only three IRQs (two by the original motherboard channels and one for the card). Support for the card is provided through a driver provided by the maker of the card. As an additional bonus, these cards usually support the latest Ultra DMA transfer modes, and support for large hard disks as well. If you have an older system, the best way to go is to put the hard disks on the add-in card to get support for high-speed transfers, and then use the motherboard's channels for slower ATAPI devices. And as if that weren't enough, these cards cost under $50!

IDE/ATA Channels and Resource Usage

I'm probably going to change that, and connect the hard drives to it instead...at least two of them, since my controller card only has two connectors. The reason that I'm posting this, is just that I want confirmation that this info is accurate and up to date?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but IDE/ATA includes both IDE and SATA...does it not? In any case, connecting the hard drive to the internal controller did not help. In fact, the performance dropped off a bit, and unlike when I moved the driver to the external case, the internal card connection did not restore SMART data. Those things may be due to the quality of the controller card...don't know.

I came across some articles about HighPoint's new hybrid controller card, that is supposed to be able to combine a regular hard drive with and SSD:

HighPoint launches hybrid controller card for SSD and HDD - www.nordichardware.com

On the surface, it sounds good, but since it hasn't actually been released yet, despite that article's speculation about it being released in February, there are a number of questions that I would have before ordering one. For instance, Seagate's hybrid drives are designed in a fashion that causes the hard drive to stop when not needed. It would seem to me, that this would cause faster wear, because of the inertial forces at work, plus the heating/cooling cycles. I'm wondering if the hybrid controller card would do the same?

My interest is simply in terms of flexibility/options, such as either preparing for a future addition of an SSD, or using it to connect two regular hard drives.