New Build with questions , brain melting :o

[magic mushroom]

Hi i've nearly finished building my pc and just bought 2x WD caviar se16 500gb Hard drives and am needing to know how to go about putting my operating system on them and dont know where to start as the more i read the more i'm finding out i need to know , and now just getting confused ...agh !
think it's best that i give you my reason of thought so you know where i'm at
here's what i'm planning,
This machine was built mainly for gaming (cod 4, ut3 ,crysis ) but need normal stuff eg surfing internet and watching movies.
i'm using Xp 32bit home edition and wanting to use my hd's in raid 0 as i understand this will improve my pc's gaming perfromance slighlty,(not too worried about loosing data as backup anything important onto maxtor 400gb external)
i also understand that it's best to seperate the os on a seperate partition of the hard drive, how does this work with raid???
do i have to set up the new disks first formatting (in windows?) then applying exacltly the same size partitions for this to work ???(for instance using partition magic?)
is it best to have another seperate partition for my games then another for other applications and another say for data eg movies etc
what order is it best to load and cleanup when installing everything from drivers, java, mozilla, games,pdf readers, flash players and media players etc.. the list goes on as i'm sure you know, just seems like so many variables and so many opinions iv'e read i'm now going round in circles in my head, want this to be as good as it gets utilising what i got
please help!!!
An idiots explanation would be good thanks so it's easy ish ;P to follow
here's the rest of my system specs incase needed

intel core 2 quad 6600 (slacr go stepping)
asus p5n32e sli mobo (1302 bios)
2gb 800mhz geil ultra low latency memory
1 gb nvidea 7950 gx2 graphics card
ocz 700w sli psu
antec 900 gaming case
acer 24 inch lcd p243w
creative gigaworks S750 THX 7.1 surround system
Logitech mx3000 keyboard with lazer mouse
Creative fatal1ty Headset

 

[geofelt]

Keep it simple, ditch the raid, don't bother partitioning.
There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

I like to get the drivers updated first, then get security installed. After that, make up a checklist of what you have to do and do them in whatever order.

---good luck----

 

[magic mushroom]

Cheers that makes it too simple ;P
Brain ache easing. .. . .. going... . . .. . gone

 

[mlaporta]

I have heard that having 2 drives 1st partioned out to lets say C & D. load the OS on C (of course) and games on D. Then keep the 2nd one (E, F, G whatever) for Video, mp3's, Data, etc. This will improve performance (be it slightly or moderately).

 

[althius]

I agree with Partitioning. No need to go nuts, but keeping the OS first will keep it faster. Also putting your SWAP file on its own partition is a good idea too. For a detailed explanation see this post:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244654-32-hard-drive-size-limitation#t1737771