Shenan Stanley wrote:

It does not address my concern(s) at all.

The "Matrix Storage Technology" is nothing new.  2004/2005ish?

In any case - RAID1 is still mirroring from one set of storage to another -
and in the case of hardware RAID1 (BTW - *I* would never recommend any
software RAID solution to anyone for any reason) it is usually instantaneous
mirroring.

If you have something mess up on the first storage device non-hardware
related (or even hardware where it scrambles a few files and is not
catastrophic and instant total failure) - it will replicate to the other
storage device and you have no good backups *if* that was your only solution
for such.

- Performance-wise - there is *no* benefit to RAID1 for the home consumer.
- Price-wise - you are losing money because you spent twice as much money on
something that gives you potentially nothing in return by itself.

Look into RAID5 further.  Redundancy and continued functionality even during
a minor failure make it still the 'king' of RAID arrays for many people.
Yes - you cannot just have two disks - you have to have a minumum of three
and the hardware capable of doing a RAID5.  However - with RAID5 - if you
lose any single disk - you continue to run and usually can *make* the time
available to you to replace the bad disk and continue working.

*However* - it has to be pointed out again - RAID is not a backup solution.
It is a redundancy (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) solution - it
keeps you up and going for as much time as is feasibly possible - even
during single drive failures.

Consistent and scheduled backups to external media is still necessary if you
want a complete 'disaster recovery' type solution.

Performance-wise, there is a slight benefit to RAID0 (not true RAID in my
opinion) and RAID5, as you spread the load across more spindles.  To be
quite honest though - most home users (even those hobbiest video editors,
music producers, etc) will never see the actual performance gain over just a
single large modern hard disk drive.

Some of the other (lesser known/lesser used) RAIDs have benefits and
disadvantages (as you would expect) - but none can I recommend as highly as
RAID5 for overall reliability and redundancy-type protection.  (Although
someone doing serious video recording/video streaming might benefit from
RAID3...)

Thank you. I'm glad to hear that.

I know nothing about it, but if it's RAID mirroring, I repeat that
it's a poor choice for home users.

RAID is always with internal drives.

I completely disagree. Again, don't mix up redundancy, which is what
RAID 1 provides, with backup.

The classic example of the need for redundancy is an airline
reservation system. If a drive is lost and the system has to go down
to restore a backup, *millions* of dollars in revenue can be lost
during the down time, because customers are fickle and will take their
business elsewhere while the system is down. Because that can't be
tolerated, redundancy is required, using RAID 1 (or some similar
mirroring system).

Home users very rarely have a need anything like that. If your system
is down for an hour or even a few, while you restore from a backup, it
may be a minor nuisance, but that's all. The home user needs, most of
all, to be sure that the backup always exists. That's why it's
critical that backup be on external media, not stored within the
computer.

Yes, I think it's very easy to use.

That's why the best choice is to use two (or more) external drives,
and alternate between them. That way the act of creating a backup is
never also the act of destroying your only backup.

Especially in these days of very inexpensive hard drives, that latter
alternative is what I recommend.