SATA RAID and drive imaging utilities? (was Norton Ghost - Instantly Makes SATA Raid unbootable?)

******* Operator from Hell; &gt
wrote in message >.. .

Instead of using Ghost....I recommend getting yourself a copy of BootItNG.
.... BootItNG does not care what kind of drive you are imaging or booting
from.... My experience on my 8KNXP Ultra has been that it will work with
all three RAIDs (IDE, SATA, and SCSI).... [P]artition images... can be
pulled from the CD Rom either using the installed version of BootIt
or the boot disk from BootIt.

Is this accurate the SATA RAID?

The BootIt NG FAQ says:
Q: Will BootIt NG work with my RAID or ATA66/100/etc controller?
A: Yes as long as the hard drives are mapped in to the BIOS and the BIOS can
be used to access them.
Q: Will BootIt NG work with my hard drive?
A: For compatibility reasons, BootIt NG uses the BIOS to access the hard
drives. As long as there is a working BIOS interface available for the
drive, BootIt NG will be able to access it.
-- http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/faq.html

I thought that native SATA Ports are NOT supported by BIOS mapping -- and
that to use SATA RAID on the 8KNXP's, you have to set the SATA controller
drives to SATA native Port0 & Port1 (rather than re-mapped to conventional
IDE drive positions).

Isn't this why the 8KNXP manuals say:
SATA Port0 SATA controller set to SATA port0. As this mode, it support by
WinXP or later OS only.
SATA Port1 SATA controller set to SATA port1. As this mode, it support by
WinXP or later OS only. [sic, natch]

Isn't native SATA only possible in WinXP (and "later") because driver
support is require to access the native SATA, rather than relying upon the
BIOS? Wouldn't the 'boot disks' of various drive imaging utilities NOT
count as "WinXP or later OS"?

On an 8KNXP Ultra system, have you actually booted from a utility boot disk
and had read/write access to a SATA RAID volume? Is there any drive imaging
utility that does/can/will provide this functionality?

If no imaging utility does/can/will provide this functionality, what sort of
disaster recovery plan is best on a SATA RAID system? Are we back to tape
backups and reinstalling a minimal OS and then restoring from tape?

Tia for any info,
John