On a scale from 1to10, I’m a strong believer in redundancy.
It keeps you alive when you’re setting rock climbing anchors, and it’s extremely valuable when it comes to digitally stored data. I have 2 hard drives inside my PC. The two are mirrored (RAID 1 – see the Wikipedia link above). Briefly, what this means is that every time I create a file or add a new program on my computer, that data is stored to both HDDs. Both of the drives in my PC reflect the exact same data (hence the term “mirror.”) This protects me against mechanical failure (i.e. one hard drive melting down.) It does not protect against something like, say, a virus or worm. This is because if it affects one drive, it will also affect the other. The two are exact mirrors of one another, and reflect the exact same operating system, data, software, etc. So if I fubar one (by installing a corrupt file or a virus) both will be messed up. But, if one of the disks stops turning, the other one can remain active and continue to run the computer. This is a type of redundancy which I am very fond of.
Now, if the computer itself catches fire, or if I do somehow install a virus, the redundancy in the RAID is no protection at all. It’s strictly a backup against mechanical failure of a single drive. That’s why I also use an external HDD to store independent backups of important data. Again, redundancy. Get it?
Spencer Boerup, a wedding photographer in Phoenix, AZ has a nice post with exhaustive detail on his beliefs in redundancy, and the steps he uses. If you’ve got 10 minutes, it’s a good read.
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