New Build RAID 1 causing windows blue screen crash

Interesting comment. If what you really planned was to have a reliable backup system for your HDD, RAID1 is NOT that! It does automatically make two copies of everything put to the HDD, BUT it has major failings as a backup system. Any incorrect data written, either by honest mistake or by malware etc. will instantly write to BOTH halves of the RAID1 array, so there is NO preservation of the "good" data. Power glitches that damage your machine and/or drives likely will damage BOTH, so no safety there, either. Stuff you delete by mistake and then wish to recover is still GONE!

If you want a reliable backup system, a second HDD is a good medium to use, although sometimes it is better if it is larger than the first HDD. That is because a good system will make several copies of the data over time and KEEP the old copies in case the error you're trying to recover from is old. However, good backup software will make a single full backup, and then a series of Incremental Backup files (only the recent changes) to save space.

The backup unit really ought to be separate from the computer. Then you connect it to power and the computer only when making (or recovering) a backup - at all other times it is disconnected and safe in a storage space. Ideally, that space is in another location from your computer to guard against flood, fire, etc. I remember the system used by professional server administrators in the place I worked. They did TWO backups regularly - one to an on-site tape unit with tape storage on site for quick access, and a second by high-speed data line to a remote service in another part of the country for safety. I vividly remember when the needed it - when two of the five HDD units in the RAID5 server failed at the same time.

You need good software to make it easy to make and retrieve backup files. And you should learn how to check the backup files to be sure they work to get your data back. (I remember years ago the panic in a university data centre when disaster struck and they found they could not read back their backups tapes! Fortunately, they found a way, but considered themselves lucky.) The most important thing you need is some discipline to DO the backup process regularly and store them properly.

Don't want to discourage, but just to illustrate that even the highly improbable can cause trouble, I heard a story that one corporate data centre in the World Trade Centre's Twin Towers had done it all right up to 9/11 but for one detail - their off-site storage location for backups was in the other tower!