[Techtalk] Made RAID Mistake?

[Brenda Bell]

Short background... on New Year's day, my hard drive barfed all over 
itself -- started making sounds like a jack-hammer after which it 
wouldn't boot and I had to reinstall and recover everything.  So, my 
husband says "I think we should install RAID".  Great... go buy the 
stuff and I'll do it.

I forgot he can't read :) so I'm sitting here looking at an Adaptec ATA 
1200A and two hard drives and scratching my head because a) I'm having 
trouble finding docs to get started and b) I think he may have bought 
the wrong stuff.

Mandrake's web site says the ATA 1200A is "known" hardware for 8.2 -- 
basically means somebody, somewhere got it working at least once.

I've found HOWTO's for root/RAID but they're talking about software 
RAID.  I've found HOWTO's for hardware RAID, but they don't say squat 
about LILO and booting.  I've found two HowTo's that sound like what I 
want to do, but they concentrate on different hardware (Promise and DTP) 
and Redhat.

I need some expert advice:  should I send this stuff back and get 
something else?  If I should get something else, what should I be 
looking for?  Or should I slam it (gently :) into an extra box I have to 
see if I can get it working?

Last question:  where can I find a general description of the overall 
process for installing hardware RAID?

Brenda