Hey Shaz,
First off - welcome to XS!
Don't be afraid of SSD's, or SSD's in RAID0 for that matter. With proper diligence (you've obviously displayed said diligence here), you will choose drives that will not only last you, but provide you maximum speed with minimal issues. In my experience, the SandForce controllers exhibit more issues out of the gate than other controllers. Hundreds of SSD's deep, I've found that SF drives are fantastic after a few firmware revisions. I wouldn't jump into the SF-2200 quite yet if I was in your shoes, even though they post some impressive numbers.
I posted earlier today regarding a firmware update that Mushkin sent out for their new Chronos Deluxe drives. Of all the SF-2200 drives, I would choose theirs - but I wouldn't choose them yet. This is likely the same firmware OCZ has released, and I know Patriot and others will be releasing firmware soon. The dust needs to settle on this new controller before confidence will justify a purchase. In the meantime, the M4 will do you some solid numbers, and provide you with excellent reliability. That would be my vote, and I know others with a significant amount of experience in this matter will agree. or disagree and post even more wisdom explaining how to get around some of the known issues the industry hasl seen recently with the new SF-2200 controller.
In terms of configuration - it's a no brainer, really. If you are using an integrated controller, enable write back cache, configure with a 64KB strip size, and enjoy the speed! Trim (in my experience with Windows 7) is of no real benefit, nor have I seen signs of nose bleeding speed degradation. This, obviously, depends on the controller/drive you choose to run with however. Windows 7 will automatically take care of garbage collection, as well as disable SSD performance killing functions like disk-defrag.
If you have any other questions, obviously XS is the place to ask.
/END SSD soapbox
Take it easy!
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