My question is indeed quite simple but I didn't find a clear definite answer by the usual method (aka Google), so I turn to this great community

I have an asus P6T-SE motherboard which includes an intel chipset X58/ ICH10R

If I understand correctly, those support hardware RAID1. Actually I managed to setup one with 2, 1TB hardrives. It's correctly detected during the POST, so before loading the OS (windows 7 home premium x64) .

I also installed intel rapid storage technology (IRST) on windows. I'm not sure, but I feel like the overall system poerformance has decreased since. For example, boot up is noticeably slower even after cleaning up the startup programs to leave only the necessary ones, making IRST the prime suspect.

Also, I feel that the RAID array is pretty slow in general, comapred to the setup I had before (same setup but 2 drives and no raid)

Can I uninstall IRST safelly without loosing the data on my RAID ? Is it a good idea ? Please note that my primary disk, used for OS and programs, is a 128GB crucial M4. The raid array is just for data

Less important but related questions :

• Is RAID1 supposed to have a big impact on performance ?
• Is cluster size important on an SSD drive ?