wont recognize ITE RAID chip, please help!

So windows crashed (big suprise) and i need to save the data on my RAID 0 setup so i can reformat and what not. I just wanted to load KNOPPIX 4.0 and transfer stuff to a USB hard drive but KNOPPIX won't detect the drives on the RAID. I have a Giga-byte P4 Titan GA-8KNXP mobo, and it has hardware raid on the ITE GigaRAID IT8212 chip. I found some stuff that says linux drivers on the giga-byte website but as i have never used linux before and am not much into programming (just a little java experience) I'm very lost as to how to get this working. I have been in other forums and some people claim it should be built into this version of KNOPPIX but others have been doing lots of kernal recompiling mostly for mandrake, can i get this to work with out installing things to harddrives? if i need to i could hook up another drive. basically im open to wahtever as long as i can get my data back and I can be stepped through it since im the eccence of noob. THANKS sooooo mcuh to any who can respond to this!