Boot RAID alternative

[ToddAT]

Hello everybody, just registered on AT.

So, let me get right to bugging people for advice............

I have always built my own computers but have been out of the game for a very long time now. Currently running a i5-750 on Win 7 and going to rebuild with Ryzen 5 3xxx on Win 10. Should be an easy build but I have one major build decision. I have been running my boot drives on RAID 1 forever. I realize it's not really a true backup, but it has done one thing that I absolutely love - when one of the RAID 1 boot drives fail, I just plug in another one. I have had to do this maybe 3 or 4 times over the years and it is so nice to just buy another drive, stick in and be done. Not to mention the fact that the system just keeps on running when the drive fails. No downtime, no resinstalls, no nothing but put in another drive.

But now, moving to Win 10, I wonder if there is a similar or better option. I have never used Win 10 so not sure what might be available to accomplish the same outcome without actually using RAID. It would be nice to spend my upgrade money on a single M2 drive instead of twice the money on 2 M2 drives (and use less IO lanes). For the savings, I might even go to the R7. Also, the MSI MBs I am looking at don't support RAID. I have started to read up on the "Storage Spaces?" in Win 10 but was hoping somebody out there already went through this dilemma and has some suggestions.

Haven't done a build in a long time, looking forward to it.

PS. My current setup is a couple of small SSDs in RAID 1 for the OS and 2 ITB hard drives in RAID 1 for data. I will also be looking at proper backup for my data, but my only real concern for now is system approach for OS install on new build. I will put the data drives in later.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly? It's actually a bit simpler, if you get one (adequately-size) NVMe SSD for the OS, and then a slightly slower, bigger SSD (like a Samsung QVO), for data/game storage.

Then, get a freaking huge external HDD (WD EasyStore 8TB and 10TB are popular, and often cheap on ebay from BestBuy when they go on sale, or on BestBuy's site). Then download and install Macrium Reflect Free edition, and set up the scheduler, and plug in the external USB3.0 desktop HDD, and run a backup every week or so (or every day). You can choose which drive(s) are included in the backup image(s).

I use a NAS unit, on my network, so that I don't have to remember to plug and unplug external HDDs very often (unless I'm archiving from the NAS itself). You can set up multiple PCs on the LAN to all backup to the same NAS directory, although if it's a consumer NAS, and you're encrypting the backup directory (recommended), you may want to stagger your backup start times across your LAN, so as not to bog down the NAS and the backups.

 

[ToddAT]

I was considering something like this for data backup, but not sure how this helps me if my boot disk fails. With RAID 1 boot disk, I just replace the failed drive.