If you are like most people, and use your computer daily, and use it to store photos, documents, media, Raid 1 is the greatest and best backup system, that protects against hard drive failure AND downtime.  Raid is the cheapest solutions that ensures zero downtime, minimal hassles, minimal price and piece of mind 24/7.   Raid 1 basically has two identical hard drives, and mirrors each hard drive to each other constantly.  So it one fails, you get a notice to replace it, and you just keep clicking along just like nothing happened.  You send back the bad hard drive, pop-it in, and it re-synchronizes up, and you’re back to being backed up again.  The chances both hard drives will fail at the exact same time or within a few days of each other are infinitesimally small, while the chances one or the other hard drive will fail “sometime” between this instant and anytime in the future, is the dreaded and unsatisfying probability of 100%.

So that’s all you need to know, build or ask that your next computer have “Raid 1″ installed.  If you want all the nerdy details, and why it’s the best solution there is for most people, you can click here.