Meanwhile it looks like the problem may a change in Vista permissions on a single-user machine. XP by default makes the sole user an administrator. Vista does not. A web search shows maybe what I have to do is either find a way to make myself admin, or re-assign ownership of the RAID array to my Vista user name. We'll see.
One side effect of Vista installation is I found the bug which the readme mentioned - it fried my USB drive. No biggie, it's an old USB 2.0 120MB memory stick, all it had on it was the Intel Vista drivers which I re-downloaded, and my Quicken backup from the laptop, which I'll just back up again next time I update Quicken's data. MicroCenter has 2GB USB drives for less than I paid for this puppy.