Due to increased disgust with some Premiere 5.1C problems, my editor (aks the wife), is ready to allow an upgrade to Premiere 6.x
It was also suggested to me to upgrade my O/S from Windows 98SE to Windows 2000 Professional.
So, I turn to all of you Raptor folks to warn me of pitfalls.
System as it is today:

PIII 700 Mhz
1 GB PC100 memory
9 GB system disk (speed is unknown but suspect 5400 rpm)
DVRapto
3Com NIC 10/100 card
ATI Video Card
Promise FastTrack 100 with 2 stripesets
Stripeset # 1 - 2 x Maxtor 40 GB 7200 rpm 2 mb buffer
Stripeset # 2 - 2 x Maxtor 40 GB 7200 rpm 2 mb buffer
Premiere 5.1C
Some titling software

System is dedicated to video editing.

The wife has also said we can get a totally new system pre-configured with Premiere 6.x if I want to avoid any down-time or problems.
Another option is to consider getting an AVID system.
Either of these last two options will be a Laird Telemedia system by the way since they have a broadcast grade NLE system they sell and the smallest processor will be a PIII 1.7 ghz one with Windows 2000 Professional.

Thoughts / Advise...

My advise would be to go with a company who can build
you a edit system and that garuantees it will work. Windows
2000 professional is recommended for stability. I would
put 7200 rpm drives in my system (personally) to have
faster access speeds.

Whether you need to do Premiere or Avid is a personal
matter. I think you can get demos of both, so try before
you buy might be wise. Also, if your wife has already invested
heavily in Premiere knowledge (and the skills to operate
it fast and efficiently) it might be wise to stick to the product.

You are suggesting a RAID stripeset, why? Because it is
not needed for speed (most of the time). DV is only 3.6 mb/s.
A new 7200 rpm drive will easily sustain such a speed!
New drives easily support 30 mb/s. It might be wise to invest
into the fastest IDE Controller (either in RAID or normal) though
to maximize the drives througput. If you want a RAID
configuration I would personally go for RAID 1 (mirroring). This
halves your space, but it a drives files you have a 100%
identical mirror of it. So no data is lost (which is always nice
during a deadline!!). If you go down this route you would
want at least four 80 GB drives (one goes "away" for the
mirror) to stay at your total of 160 GB you outlined.

Ofcourse, if you do not need mirroring I suggest you try
two 80 GB harddisks first (without any RAID). Oh, in a PC
it is usually best to have as few harddisks as possible,
due to:

- heat production
- bus clutter (ie, speed reduction).

It is probably better to stripe two 80 GB harddisks than
four 40 GB.

Just some thoughts...

Windoze 2000 is a good choice. Go for it. I'd like to suggest you also look at Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video 3. After looking, myself, at Avid and Canopus, each had their flaws and unacceptable compromises. I lucked into VV3, decided to purchase(can't beat the price) and haven't looked back. This NLE is 100% professional, it NEVER hangs or freezes, and comes with a terrific compositing tool. Guess I'm sounding like a salesman....I'm not, but, I am sold on VV3. What you don't get is real time rendering. You can RT preview to your heart's content, just have to wait for the render to a file. Small compromise, but, BOXX has signed on with Sonic Foundry, so, we may soon find ourselves with a supporting hardware solution that provides RT rendering.