Questions for folks running RAID 1

[Skyzoomer]

My tower PC has a SSD for Win10 and programs, and a spinning HDD for data only. I backup both to external HDDs for safety and store the backup drives in a safe. I do backups of the data drive about every 2 weeks or even up to 1 month when I'm lazy.

But I'm interested in a real-time mirror of my entire data drive to cover hardware failures only. (No RAID 1 for my system drive) I will continue to do my safety periodic backups.

QUESTIONS:

1. Is RAID 1 the only way to get real-time mirror of my entire data drive?

2. I believe that to run RAID 1 on Win10, both the original drive and mirror drive have to be converted to dynamic disks. I've never used dynamic disks before.
..... a) When running dynamic disks, do all of the folders and files look and act exactly the same as running a basic disk?
..... b) Are the partitions on the drive the same?
..... c) IOW, does a dynamic disk have the same partitions and folder/file structure as a basic disk as far as the user is concerned?

3. What software do you use to backup your data drive since it is a dynamic disk?

4. Have you ever done a restore of that backup successfully? Any gotchas?

5. Say I set up RAID 1 using two identical HDDs now. One HDD dies 3 years from now. Will I be able to replace that HDD with another HDD of the same or greater capacity, but not an identical HDD and still have the RAID 1 work properly?

Please feel free to answer any question(s), even if not answering all of my questions.
Thanks.

 

[Skyzoomer]

Never mind. I found a different solution.

 

[nosirrahx]

This comes up a lot so it needs to be said, RAID 1 is for downtime mitigation, not backup.

I use RAID 1 in a few systems that I need to say up and over the course of 15 years I have had a single drive failure. RAID 1 made it easy to work around the failure and rebuild while I was sleeping.

Real time mirroring and RAID 1 both have the same issue, many times of catastrophe can destroy all of your data and the mirror will simply be a copy of the destroyed data.

 

[corkyg]

RAID 1 provides redundancy, both good and bad. I prefer cloned duplicate drives and alternate them weekly via a mobile rack setup.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've been using Stablebit Drivepool on my servers since 2014. Maybe two or three times during that stretch, it had to repair itself, which is a minor activity that doesn't take very long. You can have 3x or greater redundancy at the file and folder level, but I never thought it necessary to have more than 2x redundancy.

Even so, for files that I do not bother to duplicate, they get backed up with everything else to my scheduled backup disk using SyncBack SE.