Now That You've Ripped Your Entire Collection...

Rhanson739, redundancy won't help in case of controller failure that can make both disks unusable not to mention Windows itself (known to go crazy) even without viruses. That's in addition to overvoltage, lightning, fire theft etc. Another advantage of separate disk is the fact that it is unpowered. MTBF is rated for working HD and not for one in storage.

Kinanki --

A controller failure? Where's that point, in the PC/Mac itself, or in the drive(s)? And are you referring to a single RAID-1 drive, or my solution of two separate and distinct drives?

If the 'controller' is in the drives, then two physical drives plus the CD collection should be adequate backup, I would think, given that those represent three separate copies. If the 'controller' is in the system... I have any number of Macs in the house that I could swap in and out, simply connecting the live drive to the machine. (My current box is a Mac Mini with 16GB of memory, SSD drive, and software stripped to the essentials. I can move a Macbook Pro back in without flinching.)

Hope I'm not missing something. In my view, redundancy and off-site backups are goodness. Is there something better, or more secure that I've neglected to consider?

Regarding my earlier point about drives that are larger than 2.19 TB, I should emphasize that the caution about using them with older operating systems only applies to drives that are directly connected to the computer, such as via USB, Firewire, or eSATA. I'm pretty certain that caution does not apply to networked (NAS) storage, assuming that the design of the NAS enclosure supports larger drives.

Regarding cloning programs for Windows, IMO it is generally simpler and better to just copy the files, rather than creating a drive clone. Under some circumstances allowing Windows to "see" both a drive and an identical clone of that drive can result in problems, caused by inconsistencies in the drive letters that Windows assigns.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks, Al. Seems that there are some significant differences between Windows and Mac... but we knew that. ;)

Rhanson739, I was talking about interface chip on computer motherboard. People often believe that Raid mirroring gives them 100% protection while in reality they are subject to computer hardware failure, viruses, overvoltage, operating system software failure and even static electricity. The safer solution is unpowered drive in a storage. One I have at home resides in fireproof safe. Am I crazy?