Raid0 Backup oddities/VHD not recognized/Initial disk corrupt

Where to even start here... what started off as a simple Hard Drive Replacement has seemed to have escalated to a "what the hell am I doing?"

Essentially my brother's HDD was going bad, giving us the warning before Windows loaded to replace soon; so we ordered a new SSD to replace the failing hard drive, and use the a second 500gb drive we had for the remainder of the files.

The computer was initially configured as RAID, but I noticed in the RAID menu that there was no array, and that the second disk was not showing up in explorer. I found this odd, so I attached the disk and viola, I had an extra 500gb of storage to back up the dying hard drive.

I used the Windows backup to backup the first 500gb drive to the second one that was formerly not showing up (this is where I get a bit worried).

Is it possible that I messed up a RAID array that was not listed in the RAID configuration after the POST screen? I always had thought it was configured as a RAID1, but I suppose in my ignorance, I never really checked until I actually needed the backup of the initial drive.

After backing up the image, I tried booting from the first drive and it would no longer allow me to boot into windows (gives me an error saying a number of system32 files are now corrupted; it went into safe mode once and crashed shortly after). As for my image backup, the VHD is not recognized by my restore disc, nor Acronis True Image. The only good thing, so it would seem, is that I can attach the image and view the files in it; however, I cannot figure out how to get all of those files restored without losing pretty much everything. I don't care for the music/movies/pictures so much, but the programs I had as there were a number of games and programs that were rather invaluable to me, and I'd rather not go through with re-updating everything.

At the moment I've installed another copy of Win7 on the SSD temporarily in an attempt to try and remedy the issue with my other two 500gb HDDs so that I may be able to recover all my files.

In summary:
1x 500gb HDD corrupted (I don't truly know to what extent)
1x 500gb HDD with system image (but it isn't recognized by windows recovery or acronis)
1x 120gb SSD (currently installed with Win7;had to regedit to get the install to finish)

What I want to do:
Restore my system image to my operable HDD (I know I will need an external), then migrate part of it to my SSD with (I was planning on using Paragon migrate to SSD, which I had purchased and installed prior to losing my initial HDD).

Many thanks to anyone who can traverse my wall of text and lend me a hand.

I've already tried reseating everything and booting without any USB devices plugged in, I've also memtest'd the ram and tried different sticks just in case, I've also tried removing the wireless card, so we can skip those formalities.