If you like the idea of RAID, use it, but it is mostly for servers that want 
100% up-time.  If one drive fails, then the other drive will work alone until 
the failed drive can be hot-swapped.  At least that is the way it is supposed 
to work in that particular RAID mode.  Of course, if the RAID controller fails, 
the system is down anyway. (striping is for achieving some increase in data 
transfer speed)

Do not use the RAID array as the backup.  Have a separate regular backup to 
external hard drives. (or tape or CD/DVD if you wish).  A good backup medium 
these days is a SATA hard drive mounted in one of these "bare drive docking 
stations" that has a USB (or Firewire, or E-SATA, or ..) interface.  To 
physically mount the drive, you drop it in the vertical slot and press it down. 
 To physically dismount the drive you press the eject lever on the box/device, 
and the drive pops up.  A standard bare 3.5" hard drive fits nicely in a small 
bank safe deposit box, if you don't have any handier place for off-site storage.

There are lots of free and cheap software for performing incremental (new, 
newer files) backups to media that mount and perform like disk drives.  
Schedulers will perform the automatic backup at any time interval you wish.  
Some will even continuously monitor your data directory for changed files and 
perform the backup "immediately."  That may be a hazard, as a corrupted file 
could overwrite a good backup.

Fred Holmes

At 08:58 PM 5/10/2009, mike wrote:

>From your post, you clearly have no idea who you are speaking of.  Quoting
>the first line from a wiki page is a good scam, try actually knowing the
>people you are talking about.
>
>And no, not anything...just the things that you are wrong about.
>
>You leave out one crucial detail, RAID works.  It has for a long time and
>will continue in many places.  If you are afraid of it then don't use it,
>but you need not spread FUD around.


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