RAID newbie question

[GEQ]

I have a RAID 1 array on my new ASUS P4PE, with 2 WD 20gb drives, on the RAID controller and the SATA port. I set up the array, then formatted, installed W98SE, installed applications etc. At system boot the array is reported as "functional". The Promise Array Management utility reports everything OK. I set it to inform me of bad sectors, errors etc. May I assume now that the array is mirroring everything on my main HD?? Is is OK to defrag etc? How much trust can you put in this type of system? I will still do external backups of my financial data and other mission critical stuff, but is the RAID1 setup in general going to keep me from having to rebuild my HD after a crash? Pardon my paranoia, but they really are out to get us. Thanks in advance.

GEQ

 

[voidedwarrenty]

My understanding is that you put one HD on RAID0, and the other on RAID1, and the HD on RAID1 is a mirror of the HD on RAID0, please correct me if I am wrong. Sorry if I confused you..
In THG's guide to RAID it says only Backups are truly safe, if you have critical data I reccommend mirroring and backup.. both not either. Thats the best way, imo, to keep data backed up and safe..

 

[DOOM]

I don't have any personal experience, but that sounds right.

You should still keep a backup, tho, because as I understand it, RAID only protects against hardware malfunction. If you have software crashes, or viruses, then the errors that are "legally" written to the drive array will be committed to both drives.

-DOOM