Vista - 1st Raid Card Install, Need jump Start...

Hi Folks, My System config will be listed below.

I have ran on board RAID and need advise or pointers to get me going with the Areca-1200 and two WD RE3 750GB hard drives.

My humble skill level:

I built my vista 64bit system myself from the ground up. A very nice smooth experience. Scary smooth.

I had used RAID 1 for backing up photos experimenting with both of the on-board raid controllers, Gigabyte's and Intel's. I have since moved the drives to an external eSATA two drive box by XTRASTORE.
I have not ran a booting OS RAID setup.

So now I want to go from running my OS on a single WD 750GB Green HDD to the RE3 drives in Raid-1 in case one dies I can keep going until the parts are replaced or fixed. I'm hoping the trouble of using a controller card will be rewarded in the freeing up of resources the on-board would put on my CPU. The external eSATA setup will remain.

I will want to pull my current WD Green 750GB drive, install the RE3's with the Areca-1200 and reload a fresh Vista HP 64bit OS starting as a new system. Fun Huh?

So I am hoping you guys can give me a jump start the manual will not. Perhaps things in my motherboard BIOS I would need to change like a fast boot option and such.
Or tips and tricks.
I want to go from my single drive system to a RAID 1 setup doing a new Vista Home Premium install and a fresh software installs.
My application other than a home PC is running Adobe's PhotoShop CS4 and Canon's Digital Photo Professional.

Anything you can prepare me for will be great, Thanks