Western Digital SATA Connections 3 questions

[sjm1027]

Question 1:
I have a total of 3 hard drives. I am having second thoughts. I was going to connect the 2 36.7 gig 10,000 RPM drives in RAID 0 but I am reading if 1 drive messes up you have nothing because parts of all data are stored on both drives. Then if I go with RAID 1 I am wondering what the benifits of mirroring the operating system and other software. I also have a 3rd hard drive a 120 gig SATA drive at 7200 rpm and I was going to use that drive as a backup drive, a place to store stuff.
What would you do in my situation?

Question 2:
If I do go with a RAID configuration I have a total of 4 SATA connectors on my ASUS (A8V) Mother Board. First 2 labeled SATA_RAID2, SATA_RAID1 and if I look in a different location I see 2 more labeled SATA2, SATA1 So I would imagine if the 2 drives I want to connect in either RAID0 or RAID1 would go to connectors SATA_RAID2, SATA_RAID1 and the 120 gig drive would connect to SATA1?

Question 3:
I noticed a SATA Power connector on each drive but I have no cables for them. Because they are SATA drives do I have to use SATA Power cables or can I use the Legacy 4 pin power connectors?

Thanks
Steve

[Spartan]

Question 1- If you already have the 2 Raptors use Raid 1 and put the OS and other apps on it, then use the 120 for general use and storage.

#2- Correct

#3- You can use either the Sata connector or the legacy connector but not both at the same time. Your local computer store probably has a adapter than turns legacy into Sata if you want to go that route.

-Spartan

[sjm1027]

Thanks for the help!
Steve