You won't lose everything on your HDD's if you make a RAID 1 group. JUST make sure you know the address of the drive you want to copy, and the address of the blank drive. If you mix these up you WILL lose all your info.
I use an Abit mobo that has 2 Raid chips built in. My C drive is actually 2x 120GB 7200 SATA in Raid 0, and my storage is 2x 120GB 7200 SATA in Raid 1.
When I installed my RAID 1 setup, the wife had one 120GB full of pics and vids. I checked the addy of that drive 3x before I hit build RAID Group. Worked like a charm.
