I have a RAID 0 installed in my computer and got complacent with backing up my data. When several capacitors on my motherboard went bad, those drives were essentially useless. I had to search long and hard to get the same motherboard since it had an integrated RAID controller. I was able to rebuild the array, but it took weeks. I have all my data back, but I got lucky. If you plan to use the RAID for data you can afford to lose (like music that is backed up on DVDs) the go ahead and do it. Otherwise, it is not worth the risk since a whole slew of things could go wrong that you don't even know is possible until it's too late. Big hard drives are pretty cheap anyway... I found a new 160 gig Seagate 7200 RPM with 2mb cache for 29.95 at a Best Buy sale a couple months ago.

MisterW