Is anyone familiar with the RAID 1 controller that Dell sells? I was considering installing on my home pc. Is this something a not so computer literate person can do?
Do you actually "need" real time hard drive mirroring and a CD-R won't suffice ? Yes, it's relatively complex to configure.
If you're using W2K or XP, check the Disk Management utility - you should be able to create a mirrored set without bothering with a RAID controller (unless you're building a high performance server that's going to be taking lots of disk traffic, you shouldn't need a seperate controller). As far as "needing" a realtime mirror rather than an occassional CD backup - with how cheap hard drives have become, it doesn't have to be "need" of an RT mirror so much as being willing to pay a couple hundred bucks for added redundancy and not worrying about backups in the event of a HD problem. CD backups are OK if you've got a comparatively small hard drive. But if you're using larger format drives - forget it. Even if you're using a DVD writer, it could take 10+ DVDs (or a whole lot more CDs) and a lot of time to backup (and later restore) a fairly full 120 GB hard drive - but with an active mirror, if the primary disk fails you can keep going and with little or no interruption instead of the alternative. If you've ever had a disk fail on you and had to screw around with replacing and then restoring, a couple hundred bucks is cheap insurance to not have to do it again.
If you are using Win2000, you can easily "clone" your HD. (I do mine regularly). Respond to this post, and I'll tell you how.