any computer gurus here?

well, one is a Toshiba 120GB DMA5 and one was a WD 120GB DMA6. I was going to install an SSD for the OS and keep the 120GB as the apps but thought I would dabble in the RAID first. I just wasnt sure you had to format the array as striped? Seems the Fasttrack builds a mirror all by itself as you can do that with a working drive, but not a striped. you have to start from scratch, and 2 120's made 1 240GB drive array. I thought for all this time that it would stay a 120, but it would be like 2 identical drives sending the info twice as fast, like 2 heads reading instead of one. Oh well, Im not out a PC I got 4 more laptops to fall back on, this one is just the biggest/baddest- fastest. In 2006 it was the fastest laptop on the planet...! Of course its not nowadays...but its like having a Hemi Cuda, fastest at one time but not any more.

Mirrored it just duplicates the data on both drives and would be 120 but not striped as you found.
Your fatal failure was the two drive not being identical make and model.

"2 identical drives sending the info twice as fast, like 2 heads reading instead of one"
This is exactly how it works.