As ever and typical for a Pprune thread it has already gone off topic. Thanks MTK I'm well aware of the shortcomings of just raid. However if my house burns down I will have much greater concerns than the data on the computer.
Now back to the main topic which is a hardware/ system related issue. What I am trying to work out/ get some help on is:-
Is it possible to get the system running with 3 hdds, 2 as a raid array and the 3rd as the main boot disk/ OS platform- not part of the array. Irrespective of whether it is a good idea or not I am curious to try it out. Thus far the best I have done is got the array up and running on its own (OS embedded in the array), no other hdds connected;
OR, 3rd HDD in the primary IDE socket with OS and RAID array still connected - like this the system 'sees' all three drives
HDD in primary IDE - C:
RAID pair in raid controller sockets - F: & G: (not recognised as an array even though at boot up the screen flashes up a message that the Mirror array is functional).