Looking for RAID system

I was thinking about a RAID system for my computer. After all the issues I have had lately, I thought maybe a way to backup everything might not be a bad idea. Any suggestions? Internal or external?

Any idea on how I would set that up?

4. RAID vs Traditional Data Backup
Although RAID provides reliability against disk failure, it’s no replacement for traditional disk backup. A RAID 1 system can withstand one disk failure, and a RAID 6 system even tolerates two disk failures simultaneously. However, to prevent data loss we still need to perform back-up from RAID systems for the following reasons:

Backups let us restore data if data is lost across all disks
We can keep backups in off-site locations and use them to restore data if required

Introduction to RAID | Baeldung on Computer Science



One very important thing to note, RAID 1 is not a backup in and of itself. Although RAID writes data to two disks simultaneously, it is not a backup. If your operating system or software, rather than the hard disk, corrupts your data, this corrupted data is sent to both disks and simultaneously corrupts both drives. However, a backup is a copy of data, which is stored somewhere else and is detached from the original data both in space and time. Backup data is not corrupted unless you specifically back up corrupted data. In short, even if you use RAID, you still must use an effective backup workflow.

Understanding RAID Storage for Back-up & Archiving | How to Archive


Introduction to RAID, Concepts of RAID and RAID Levels - Part 1


Macrium Software | It’s our business to protect your data
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect

Yes, those are good points.

Hi folks

@netrate

Cheap domestic grade RAID controllers are probably worse than useless these days -- software RAID as practiced in Windows is essentially by using Storage spaces which IMO tends to be rather unreliable and I don't think you can boot from a device part of a Storage space.

Backup data regularly to external devices is IMO the safest way for home computer users to keep data safe.

I use software RAID 0 on Linux (this is purely for speed as these days if any disk in a RAID 0 array breaks you lose the lot) -- but as I regularly back up data to external devices the speed of RAID 0 is definitely worth it (plus on Linux with MDADM (built into the Linux kernel) you can use a combination of different size HDD's and it uses all the space -- other systems usually require similar size HDD's or you lose any extra space on a larger disk if combining with a smaller HDD.

I haven't had and HDD failures for a long time now -- that's not to say it won't happen but regular backups mitigates data loss if failures do occur.

With RAID 0 it's all a case of "Risk to reward" ratio -- the speed improvement when using decent HDD's is definitely worth it IMO.

Here I've got 4 HDD's split into 2 RAID 0 Arrays of 2 HDD's each.



If you must use Hardware RAID on Windows get a decent SAS type controller (not too cheap though) and ensure the Disk I/O bus speed on the MOBO can handle the throughput.

This is probably the cheapest decent one I could find which should do the trick for you on typical hardware. Don't even think of using cheaper grade consumer basic RAID controllers. This is from UK -- price INCLUDES VAT (sales tax) so when comparing say with Amazon US remember their prices don't include sales tax. 1 GBP = approx 1.29 USD, 1.10 EUR

IBM 46M0861 - ServeRAID M1015 6Gbps SAS / SATA PCIe RAID controller, RAID 0, 1 and 10: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Cheers
jimbo