Help please with Inspiron 531 upgrade

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I have an Inspiron 531 desktop AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+,4.00 GB RAM, Radeon X1300/X1550 Series graphics, and with two 500gb SATA drives in a raid array. The current system has Vista Home Premium as OS.

Ideally, I want to do two things

• ·         Install an additional new SATA drive of either 1.5 or 2.0 Tb capacity

• ·         a new clean install of Windows 7 Professional 64bit

My questions are these

Can I achieve my ideal, and if so how do I configure?

The thing I’m most unsure about is the RAID array. Do I need it, will it work without it; if so can I turn it off?  I just don’t know!

It was my understanding that RAID improves data integrity, but is that the only benefit. Additionally will I notice the difference if I don’t have it?

A lot of questions I know, and I have trawled the forum for answers. However, what I really need is the experience of you guys to keep me on the right track

Many thanks in advance.