Was this suggestion in the "old" pre-Riocar.org FAQ in the FAQ forum? I ask because I don't remember seeing that, and it's really a good idea.

Yes.

I didn't know the Empeg would fail-over to /drive1 in case of a /drive0 failure.

That's not what I meant. I mean that if, at the hardware level, drive0 disappears, then the only other drive plugged into the IDE cable just becomes drive0. It's not an empeg-specific thing, it's just the IDE controller doing it.