[Ripplinger]

Years ago when I first considered a RAID setup and read about what happens when even a part of it failed, I decided like HarryT that it just wasn't reliable. Since I was ready to get 2 drives anyway for the RAID, I decided to still get them but use them as 2 separate drives. The 2nd drive is a full cloned backup of the main drive, which means if the main drive goes belly-up for whatever reason (virus, bad software installation that just doesn't play nice, drive actually dies), all I have to do is swap which drive I boot up to at startup and I've got my computer back in a few minutes. I have a nightly file sync that is done to copy any changed files, such as my photos, ebooks, all documents, bookmarks, anything subject to a lot of changes. The only thing I might miss are newly changed or created documents for the day, and there's usually always a way to get those back, and possibly program updates depending on how long ago I did the last cloning.

If the main drive turns out to be dead, I just buy a new drive at that point and clone the 2nd drive back to the main drive and fully back in business without any down time. Cloning takes less than 3 hrs on a 2 TB drive and I usually do it while I sleep, maybe once every 3-6 months. If it was just a software glitch or a virus (although I've never once had a virus and my first computer was in 1984), I still just clone the 2nd drive back to the main drive, change boot order and all is back again.

The nightly backup also make copies of files that change often to a 2nd PC, which also has the same 2 drive setup.

I've never lost any data since doing this over 20 years now. It's a system I'll probably always keep until something more reliable, as easy, and as cost efficient comes along.