Is my raid 0 correctly setup?

Just wanted to see if i was doing this right or not. I put together my max extreme and 2 raptor x 150's, connected them to sata 1 and 2. went into bios and set for raid. restarted with vista 64bit in and created the raid 0 array, then went to installation of vista and it came to the screen where you can install optional drivers like raid or whatever...was i supposed to have a driver on cd or floppy to be installed? i put the mobo cd in and didnt recognize any drivers to install so i just hit next and continued on with the install of vista. it boots up fine and my c drive is 279gb, so the array works right? i installed the software off the mobo cd at the desktop but im just second gussing myself thinking i had to install a driver during install of vista for my raid for it to work properly?

the mobo comes with the Jmicron raid controler

also, dont you have to format the hard drives when you buy them new? i didnt see any option to do this during install..even before creating the array..

Im just trying to make sure i have this set up correctly for max performance.

thanks for any help.

Well i also have Intel matrix storage manager..and my c drive -only drive- (assuming both raptors raid 0) totals 279gb.

im thinking of starting this whole process over, not sure where to format the drives bc i dont see any option before or after creating the array.

how do i know if i have the correct raid driver installed? im guessing if i didnt my array wouldnt work?

Your RAID 0 setup appears from what you say to be working normally.
Wrong driver = no bootable or detectable disk, or array.
Vista must have had the RAID driver your board needs.

If it was XP, then yes, you would have needed and supplied the correct driver at the point where the installation asks you to "press f6 if you need to install a 3rd party driver". There is usually a floppy disk that comes with your motherboard. If not, sometimes the drivers are located on the CD, but you have to copy to a floppy to load them at install.

Very simply and without going into a lot of detail, creating the array "formats" the drives. Your OS does not "see" or "know" that there are 2 drives there, it only sees the array as one large drive. How data is handled on the array is controlled by the RAID controller.

I like RAID 0, have used it for years. But I make use of it on cheaper, slower drives that cost about 1/4 of what you paid for your Raptor. That kind of makes a little difference, RAIDing 2 slower drives to get a little better thoughput. However, RAIDing a couple of really fast drives like your Raptors will net you much less of noticable gain, because the Raptors are so fast already. Unless you are doing something that requires constant movement of very, very large files. By large I am talking in gigs, not megabytes. You will not notice any improvement over a single Raptor not RAID'd. That is about all there is to it.
If you RAIDed them just to have greater combinded storage, that is cool. Just be sure to maintain a reliable backup of your data.
Don't kid yourself or let anyone BS you, if you run RAID 0, you will at some time wish to hell you had a good backup, or you will be very glad you did have a backup. Make no mistake, it will happen.

I keep a seperate 320 gig drive that I simply mirror my array to every couple of weeks or so. That way if my array takes a dump, I have a complete mirror of my OS and everything I have on another drive that I can simply set to boot, in case my RAID 0 array fails.