Questions on setting SATA HDDs and cloning OS to SATA HDDs from IDE Hdd

[Ghidrah]

Howdy, I'm considering installing 2 SATA drives in my pile. I have a ASUS P4C800 deluxe mb. that has 2 SATA sets and 1 common RAID set connectors. One of the SATA sets is for a RAID array.

I'm currently running;
Primary IDE: Master, OS, Slave, games
Secondary IDE: Master, DVD burner, Slave, DVD player
Floppy drive
1 USB external HDD as a back-up for the OS

What I would like to do is install twin SATA drives in a RAIDO array for the OS. Remove the Primary Master, (give it to my daughter) keep the Primary Slave with the games. Keep the Secondary with the DVD drives and continue to use the USB as a back-up for the OS.

Am I correct in thinking that once I set up the SATA drives, I can either clone the OS from the Primary IDE or the OS from the USB back-up to the SATA drives?
Or am I forced to do a complete reinstall of the OS and all my couple of years worth "TONS" of software?
I'm hoping

[EzyStvy]

Cloning software needs to specifically say it supports raid.

Since it's been a couple of years, doing a fresh install would be a real nice idea...

[Nimda]

Well, you should first install drivers for the RAID array you are going to use as the destination drive under the operating system installed on your IDE drive and then use clone hard drive. It'll recover your OS and "tons" of software.
But my own experience shows, that installing RAID you make big change in hardware configuration. So if you do not have very huge among of software, I recommend you to reinstall OS. It will be better, even if you'll spend several days for this.