> RAID increases the probability of failure.

Turning a machine on increases the likelihood of failure.

> Two drives are more likely
> to
> fail than one drive.

But not at the same time.  That is the failure that RAID is designed to
mitigate.  If you have multiple, simultaneous drive failures, you have much
bigger problems than worrying about your RAID controller. 

> Add to that the complexity of a RAID controller
> and
> the probability of failure increases further. 

All of the multiple safety systems in your car increase the probability that
one or more will fail at an inopportune time.  Are you going out to your car
and ripping them out today?  Will you feel safer then?

RAID is designed to handle drive failure (excepting RAID 0).  Coupled with
hot swap drives and or onboard hot spares, it is designed for system uptime
in enterprise situations where that is critical.  For that to be effective,
you need to supplement that with a daily backup routine.  If you're
fortunate enough, you can have a redundant system of servers, where the data
is spread over multiple servers (you know, where the software never fails),
but you'll still need backups.

Run single drive systems at your own risk.  The probability of a single
drive failure bringing down your system is 100%.  With RAID it is much
lower.


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