Can I stripe my hdd's? I think I've got hardware for it, but I'm not sure...

When I boot my pc, something about an Intel raid controller apperas on the screen for a short time before Vista boots.

So I've looked it up and Vista lists an 'Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Controller' as a storage controller. There's software installed to control it and to stripe my hdd's, but I'm wondering if it'll give me the performance increase that real striping gives.

In my boot menu (I think it's the bios menu) there's nothing about raid or striping, not even in any subcategory.

My pc is an Acer M5500-1E77. I don't know what mobo's in it and I don't have a manual of it and I don't find anything of it on the internet.

So I just don't know if there's hardware to increase performance, or weither it's just software that makes two hdd's in one volume and that it so doesn't give me any performance increase what so ever.

Does somebody know how to find this out without having to buy another hdd to test it?

I've found a hint that supports my suspicion that I have that hardware, but I'm not sure.

So does anyone know how I can have a definitive answer on how I can know for sure that I have a raid0-supporting chip or not?

About the matching hdd's, is it okay to add a new hdd of the same size, but slightly (barely) faster than the old one for raid0?

And about the hardware, I installed a new driver for it, and the name just changed, wich I think is kind off odd.

But a requirement to install it was that hardware is present on the mobo, so does anyone know if I could install the software (http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2101) without tht hardware? Or would anyone, who is sure that the hardware isn't present on his mobo, try to test it to see if you can install it?