VIA Sata controller

Hey everyone,

I recently bought a 500GB SATA HD. My mobo can hold up to 4 SATA drives. Now I have a total of 3 SATA HDs. The 4 SATA connections are distinct in that 2 are from Promise and the other 2 are from VIA. I have had problems with my VIA in the past, so when I had just 2 SATA HDs, I would connect them to the Promise controller. Now that I have 3 HDs, I have to use the other, VIA, controller.

Once I hooked up the HD, things seemed not to work. Then when I re-installed the drivers for the controller through Windows, I was able to get the HD recognized.

Now about 2 weeks later (yesterday) I was watching a movie from a drive that was on the Promise controller (but the software running the movie was on the VIA controller) and when it was done, I went to exit the program and I heard a click, like the power went down on the drive. I've heard this noise before, so my instinct told me to shut down the computer. After testing things, different drives into the different controllers, I couldn't get any drive to work on the VIA controller, but none of the drives were damaged, as they worked on the Promise controller. When I go to start up my comp, when the BIOS tries to read the drive, I get a message saying that the drive is not starting properly.

Oh, and for reference, I have a Asus A8V Deluxe mobo.

So, on to my questions.
Has anyone experienced this problem with a VIA controller on such an Asus mobo? If so, how have you fixed the problem?
Could it be that I just need to re-install the drivers? Is it possible that the VIA controllers are shot?
Final question... If I got a PCI board that allowed SATA connections, wouldn't that slow down the access to the drive connected via the PCI board, especially since I have a sound card, wireless NIC, and TV Tuner card in my PCI slots?

Thanks in advance!