Apple raid, hard drive config & time machine Qs

hi folks,
just about to jump back onto an apple box (mac pro 8 core)
after a 3 year linux stint, and have a few questions about
apple raid, time machine, and my hard drive setup.
this is the hard-drive setup i am considering:
4 internal drives in 2 pairs of raid0 sets for performance.
i have not yet decided on the capacities & brand or even if
i will be going sata or sas yet. i will be getting the apple
raid card regardless.
raid card questions:
as far as i can tell the apple raid card
will support 2 x raid0 arrays, correct?
it will NOT support 1 sas array simultaneously
with one sata array, correct?
it will only support 4 drives total, correct?
i would like to put boot and swap on set 1, and my home directories
on set 2. i know having boot on raid0 is risky btw. i also know os x
doesn't by default have a separate swap partition, but more on that
below.
my backup strategy will be. mirror the boot partition to the stock
320GB drive that i get in the mac pro which will be in an external
enclosure. this will probably be done weekly with a cron script or
one of the tools like SuperDuper i've been hearing about. the external
drive ideally would be bootable.
questions about my boot setup:
does the external mirror drive need to be esata to be bootable or can it be
firewire 800?
is it worth the trouble of making a separate OS swap partition on this
raid set, and would doing so improve or degrade performance?
how smart are tools like SuperDuper at NOT mirroring things like swap?
on my second internal raid set, i would like to have my home directories.
i have read that this isn't too difficult to achieve in os x. i would like
to have time machine back up only my home directories to another external
drive. it will be a time capsule, or much more likely, an OWC Guardian MAXimus
in hardware raid1.
can time machine be instructed to only back up the home directories?
will i have to fight OS X to achieve any/all of the above?
any comments or advice on the above greatly appreciated, best,
_c

Have you done any review of the Mac Pro forums? This topic has been discussed quite extensively in one form or another. I suggest you browse the relevant forums where you should find answers for your questions.
As for product specifications you can find those on Apple's support site.

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Greetings,
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See Here: http://pondini.org/TM/1.html
And here: http://pondini.org/TM/9.html
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Apple raid, hard drive config & time machine Qs

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