Linux Hardware RAID Configuration

[Jeff Garland]

I'm in the process of setting up a new linux machine and I'd like to use 
hardware RAID.  Since I never setup RAID before I'm a bit unsure how to 
approach the setup.  After googling and reading a bunch of 
things...well, I'm still lost in the maze of info and unsure how the 
hardware/software setup interact.

Ok, for the details.  I have an ABIT AN8 (has an on-board RAID 
controller) and a couple SATA drives.  I was planning on just using a 
mirroring setup as I'm most interested in ensuring reliability.  I've 
setup the bios for mirroring. When I boot into Ubuntu to do the disk 
setup, it wants me to format both disk devices in the disk setup. But 
really, this isn't correct, is it?  If the RAID bios settings are 
correct, shouldn't I just format a single raid device and the controller 
will write to both disks?  Of course, I can also see that the OS might 
need to know about both disks so that if there is a disk failure it can 
provide admin functions.

Any pointers to useful howtos or suggestions appreciated.

Thx,

Jeff

ps: sorry if this is a duplicate, but my first post seemed to vanish...