Painfully slow raid setup custom computer help!

[Daeva]

A8N-SLI on raid 0 performance problems

I recently built a computer for my friend:

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD

HDD: 2x 160 GB sata on raid 0

Processor: AMD Athalon 64 4000

Memory: 2GB ddr

Power Supply: 450w

O/S: Windows XP Professional

Initially I tried setting up the HD'S in raid 0 stripping mode, and I installed windows xp x64, everything went well once i got the nvraid drivers working correctly, but windows took over 5 hours to install, and when done I thought I was running a 386 with windows 3.1, only that would have been faster. I installed nero suite, and it took over an hour. Since then i've reformatted and tried several other configurations, even doing away with raid, and running a 32 bit version of windows xp, but i get the same result, painfully slow. What is the problem?

 

[~Rob]

Little more info on what make/model of HDD's your using will help? I feel like a broken record, but if they're Maxtors.... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nforce4+maxtor+SATA&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

 

[Daeva]

sorry about that, here are the full details of the system:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor

PLEXTOR Black IDE DVD Burner Model PX-740A/SW-BL

ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD

eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16

Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600SD 160GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150

RAIDMAX Ninja ATX-918WBP Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450watts PS2 ATX12V SATA Ready Power Supply

Crucial 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) ECC Unbuffered System Memory