External RAID arrays

I'm considering a RAID1 array of 2 500 (maybe 750 depending on what my bank account wants to do) gig disks for me to put my music collection and other important files on to help protect me against disk failure and whatnot. It's gotta be external and somewhat portable though, since it's for my iMac and PowerBook, and I'll be lugging it back and forth between college and home. And I guess since it's on 2 computers, it has to be hardware RAID. And Firewire 800 is a must. I'm also thinking SATA for the internal interface, but since Firewire's likely to be the bottleneck here, I'm not sure if it matters.

I've been looking at both some premade solutions and build your own solutions. The BYO ones seem like they may be a bit cheaper, and considering that I've built multiple computers, I could handle screwing a couple HDs into an enclosure. Can anyone offer me any recommendations?

Also, assuming it's hardware RAID, how difficult is that to setup? I guess I just get 2 identical drives, put them in, press a button and the enclosure does its thing to setup the array?

Thanks