HDD configuration question, SATA Raid 0+1?

[Operaghost]

Going to get SATA with my new system, here are my questions.

1. Does the Abit IC7 support 4 SATA drives?
2. If I do a mirrored Raid 0, (0+1) Do I get the sum of all 4 drives as my capacity for the logical partition? Or just 2?
3. Say I were to lose some detrimental data, like windows system files or something. How do you go about retrieving the lost data from the mirrored drives?

Lastly and unrelated to SATA,

4. Say I have 2 drives and I don't run them in a raid, would there be a performance benefit in other applications (mainly games) to using one drive for just the OS install/system files, and put all additional software on the second drive?

..worded that last question strangely but a reread should get the point across :)

I wanna run Raid 0 for the quick acess performance but my brother did this and lost some system files I believe which are affecting his system now. I don't wanna have to reinstall the OS and such every 3-4 months cause I am losing data due to Raid 0.

Would Raid 0 really improve my gaming performance THAT much that its worth the risk?
I'm not concerned in losing any important personal information as this system won't have any, its pretty much strictly for web use and games. Thoughts, comments, advice?

[Ice Czar]

1. No there are only 2 channels and SATA is a single drive per channel\port
in addition the controller only supports RAID 0 (http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=5)
2. Cant but it would have been half the total (0 being additive, 1 being a mirror)
3. Exact steps depend on the controller
4. Possibly, see the FAQ > Partitioning and Optimizing Tutorial

the performance increase is often not access but transfer
and its pretty subjective, some swear by it, others dont see that great a benefit

consider that for the most part, for gaming
its basically load times that improve

and you do double your chance of data loss staistically in RAID 0
actually its higher than double when you factor in loss of the controller
(especially if its onboard) and pilot error
if a single drive fails its all gone