Noob to scsi, need help setting up raid

Yuri just got 3 of these for free: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/scsi/st39204lw.html

I also have a slew of other drives, but I'll start there. I have 2 scsi cards, both of which *supposedly* support raid modes of at least 0-5, don't remember how many exactly. Now, with onboard raid controllers, I just hit F6 on bootup and configure the drives but with a card its a whole different ballgame. Where would I start with setting up a raid array?



EDIT: What kind of performance loss do I have when setting up a software raid array with xp?

Ohh, also, I have 2 cables with terminators and 1 without, when are these necessary and what do they do? I can join 2 of them together right now, will it work? I plan to read the sticky as soon as I finish posting here, just noticed it .

EDIT: How do I install windows on a scsi drive? XP has the driver for both of them but doesn't see drives attached to them when installing. Do I need a floppy with the driver on it? Where can I get the driver for:

Symbios
Logic
53C875J

and

Adaptec AHA - 2904w/2904UW

there should be a hotkey to enter the raid cards bios just after post. That is where you will be able to define your array. Until this is done windoze will not recognize the drives, unless it allready has drivers for the card. Once you get into the cards bios setup it is pretty intuitive. How are you planning on setting up the drives ? Striped ?

J.

Oh yes, on your terminators. You MUST have a terminator at the end of the cable. I'm not sure if you can daisy chain the cables or not, i'd think you would need an adapter. If they connect together it should work and you just need 1 terminator at the end of the last cable.

Alrighty, good info. Currently I am just using the 3 cheeta's as a swap file drive until I get more ram for my server.

Ohh yea, and the top card doesn't support hardware level raid.