Dual boot build advice including RAID, SSD

[flightline]

So, I'm about to start building my first computer in a couple of days. I've got some parts on order, have some already, and have a few decisions to make. I'm pretty new with some of this stuff so I hope someone who's jumped through some of these hoops can help me out

I need the machine to fill a few roles: I need a general use / media machine, which I'll mostly run on the linux side (haven't decided on which distro yet) and CAD and gaming on the Windows side.

I already have a P67/LGA1155 board and i5 2500K processor, and 8GB RAM, but I'm still undecided as far as graphics and storage goes. Because I'll be fairly frequently OSs, I'd like to improve boot speed, so I think I should use a SSD boot drive, although I won't need anything too fast. If I get, say 100GB SSD will that allow enough room for both Windows 7 and, say, Ubuntu installs? Ideally most applications would be stored on the SSD and user data on other drives.

Speaking of other drives, for storage, I'd like to build in some redundancy, and so I'm thinking maybe a RAID 10 array with 4 1TB WD Blue or Green drives. From what I understand the intel chipset "rapid storage technology" is supported in linux but I'm not sure how this would work on a dual boot system. Do I need to set up the RAID in the UFI first?

Can I set up 4 drives in RAID 10, and then partition the array further? What drive formats should I be using for Win 7 and Linux ? I need to be able to read and write either partition from either OS.

And finally, if I haven't bored you too much already: Graphics

I don't really have the cash for it right now, but not too far down the road I'd like to get an honest workstation card. In the meantime I'll probably get a mid-range gaming-oriented card, maybe a 560 Ti or something. I know apple used some technology where the system could switch GPUs depending on what the computer was being used for, is there any similar tech that works in either Windows or Linux? Workstation cards tend not to be that great at games and vice versa; it would be nice if the computer could switch over on the fly, even if I had to throw a switch.

Thanks, and sorry for the long-winded post; **** is getting complicated.

[Rubberman]

Unless the RAID controller handles all RAID operations in hardware, so the OS just sees a big disc, you should NOT use RAID on your system boot drive as Windows and Linux software RAID do not play nice together. Myself, I have a 320GB system boot drive and a backup unit that I make regular bit copies of in case the system drive fails. With a hot-plug boot drive enclosure, I can restore the system in less than a minute if the drive fails. A cluster of data drives, on the other hand, can be separately partitioned for Windows and Linux (same size/position of partitions on each drive), and then you should be able to use software RAID for each OS.

Myself, I run Windows in a virtual machine, and all of my data is on Linux RAID-5 arrays or LVM cluster.