I think combing both RAID and image is the the way to go, like DataSafe from Dell: http://www.dell.com/content/learnmo...ktops&~mode=popup&~series=dimen&~tab=overview
Mike: I use Drive Image with an external hard drive (usb). When the primary drive goes down (never has), you can insert a hew hard drive, boot through a drive image cd when "walks" you through restoring the image from the USB drive to the new hard drive. The life of hard drives is about 50 human years, using Mean time before Breakdown in engineering terms. This is why I don't see the need to run two hard drives at once in a machine, but larger companies would take such a precautionary measure for sure.
The lifetime of a hd is about 5 years, mtbf is another concept. What Drive Image software do you use?
if you store files on DVD/ CD you may want to consider using ICE ECC which helps recovery. Had only one CD go bad on me on the thousand+ I created. There were a few that were unreadable on one DVD/CD reader but worked on the other and eventually I replaced that DVD/CD writer. Have not had a problem since. http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwdatarecovery.html (PS I see no reason why you cannot use this on a HD too, makes the HD backup even more secure...) Maria