Lonny Bruce wrote in message
newsOJNd.22763$uc.20667@trnddc03...
I've got a complete mirror of my
system on an alternate HD.


All that means is that if you have RAID 0 you won't know which hard drive
has been infected, and if you have RAID 1 then both hard drives will be
infected. A RAID array does nothing to protect you against worms or
viruses, only hard drive failures, and a RAID 0 array won't even protect
you
against that. In fact a RAID 0 increases the chances that you will have a
mechanical failure at some point.

My computer is set up with both RAID 0 and RAID 1 (RAID 1+0) so that I get
the benefits of boths types of systems. The two hard drives set up in
RAID
0 speed up all reading and writing functions, so opening programs takes
half
the time, writing or reading data takes half the time. Then I have two
more
hard drives in a RAID 1 array, automatically backing up everything that
happens in the RAID 0 array. For a total of 4 120GB hard drives. (240 GB
storage capacity, plus a complete backup).

Lonny

But this means that you have four large hard drives always running at 7200
rpm and therefore destined ultimately to all wear out at approximately the
same time, so your backup is going to be vulnerable at the same time as the
operating disks.
To avoid this problem I back up periodically on a USB external hard drive,
which on the days I am not using it is disconnected and therefore does not
wear. I expect you will point out that the mean time between failures of a
modern disk is very long, but it is certainly finite, and if you leave your
machine on for long periods the hours soon mount up.