Advise needed on backup solution

[DeonH]

Hi there and thanx so long for your help.

I have just bought myself a new PC with:
Motherboard: Asus P7P55-M
CPU: Intel i11i5Q750 lga1156 Quad core
1 x Harddrive: Seagate Baracuda 7200.12 1TB s-ata2

I need a backup system for this.
I do a little bit of web design, video editing for myself, Photoshop and office products. To my all my documents are very valuable, which include a bunch of photos of the family and for our club's assignments.

What is the best solution to have almost live backups? I had a look at RAID1+0 but I am not sure. I want my backup to be as recent as a couple of minutes ago, if it's possible and I am not overdoing it. I have done some reading and thought that a RAID-1 (mirror) setup should do it. But then there are some others who say RAID1+0. My main need is a reliable backup, not performance as such and therefor I have thought a mirror and not striped to be OK. If the one drive fails, I throw it out, put in a new one and Bob's your uncle?

Thanx so long.

Deon


I am open to suggestions.

 

[Conradl]

First thing to remember is that RAID is not a backup solution. It is protection against a single disk failure. If this is what you want, then go for RAID1, which in your case sounds like a good idea; RAID10 is overkill unless you require the extra performance (it does not improve reliability).

What RAID does not protect against is logical failure (you delete something or the file gets corrupted), total failure (due to fire or loss of both disks), and intentional changes (you make a change to a file and want to restore an older copy). If you want to have backups for the above failures then consider an external drive which you can store offsite, with VSS or the Previous Version function.

Also look at getting cheap tapes if your data is really important.