confused. sarge raid5 -should i use mdadm or raidtools2

[Mitchell Laks <mlaks@verizon.net>]

Hi,
I would like to set up a Debian box running Sarge, to include a storage array 
using raid5  with boot off a separate system disk.

I have read the software raid howto and  he says to use "mdadm" because it is 
newer, more unified, (levitates, leaps over a building in a single bound), 
but then seems to be describe how to do it by setting up the 
file /etc/raidtab and running mkraid /dev/md0 which seems to be the 
raidtools2 method of doing it. For instance the man page for mdadm says it 
does not use /etc/raidtab and instead uses mdadm.conf.

But the man page of mdadm says that this /etc/mdadm.conf is not written  
initially - instead it is to be generated AFTER you make the array. Well how 
do you do that using mdadm. It isnt clear to me. mdadm command man page has a 
lot of description of different command line options to mdadm, but it seems 
to me to be risky to use a tool that tells you on the man page
that if you run mdadm --create , it will create a degraded array with an extra 
spare drive, unless you override with the -I --force option. (If I wanted an 
extra spare drive, I would have rather specified  it myself on the line... I 
don't want one). More alarmingly, I dont see a -I switch listed as a switch  
in the man page... what does it do???????????????

So how does one use mdadm, is there a good howto? Is it not really  better 
than swiss cheese? Should i use good old raidtools2?

Also now I have loaded the raid5 module loaded into my kernel (modprobe 
raid5).
Now I run mknod /dev/md0 b 9 0
then i did mkraid /dev/md0 and it  has begun.

Any thoughts?
Mitchell