If I want backup, is still raid the way to go?

So in about an half hour there will be a special price on 5tb drives on a local store. I have quite a lot of data on my current 2tb drive and I thought that for once I will do some proper backup. So I was thinking of buying 2x 5tb drives and use them in software raid 1 in Windows. Is there something I should consider about this config?

I as someone who relies on TBs on top of TBs on top of Tbs of data, would not trust any drive over 2tb at this time. They tend to have a much higher failure rate, you may be able to get a much better deal by buying a few smaller drives than those 5tb drives. I have other friends in the field that feel the same way. An example is a DJ friend of mine had to fall back on two 4tb drives in his van. The drives are kept in anti-static bags inside foam lined storage cages that hold them in such a way they do not rattle or move when driving; they had been used ONCE, at that was to load them with media. he got them to his desk and they were defective.
I drove up there to let him use mine. a few days later another buddy of mine had the same problem, but had his own emergency backup solution. not 2 months later, mine go out. all were different brands, all were 3-8 TBs and were always replaced with 2tb drives, some of which that had been functioning for years.

Oh, I suppose that is logical, it's just that this is such a good deal, about 110 euros for 5tb whilst a 2 tb drive cost about 80 euros, Perhaps I should wait a bit longer then.

raid is not a backup. repeat that 20 times.

raid is for fault tolerance.

Yeah but I neither have the money, space or bandwidth to run some off site backup.

Even putting a few drives under your pillow is 100x more secure than raid.

And why is that?

if you delete a file by accident, it's gone from both hard drives. if a component of your computer is malfunctioning it could destroy both hard drives at the same time. if your power line is having a spike, it could destroy both hard drives at the same time. if someone accidentally knock over your computer, both drives could fail at the same time. if both hard drives are running all the time they could die approximately at the same time. if you're not using a raid aware filesystem you can easily corrupt your files.

there probably are more scenarios I currently can't think of but pretty much anyone who knows anything tells you that raid is not a backup.

Alright, what is the easiet and cheapest solution to backup then? Beacuse I can't have a server running 24/7.

clone the hard drives, store the clones at the other end of your home or even better at a friend's home or ideally, both.

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I have to agree, It is much more secure to write a backup to multiple drives. I have even seen a guy on YT who created a physical "back up" button on his PC where all he has to do, is push the button and the PC backs up. If you want back up to the extreme, more backup HDDs at the least, maybe a NAS build in the middle and if you are REALLY paranoid, like me, a Home server with LOTS of rack space.

Okay, but it should't matter if the drive is inside the computer? I Could have 4x 2tb drives and make copies of 2 of the drives to the other 2 like once a month?

That's exactly what you should not do. Move the drives as far away from your computer as possible.

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It's just that it will quite alot of swaps and carrying around the drives alot. That can't be safe.

when bf77 said "under the pillow" what they were talking about was fault protection, as long as a drive has a current going through it, it has the POSSIBILITY of getting fried. though, if you take proper measures like a fault protector/battery that has insurance. It is a relatively low risk. but the only way your drive is free of risk is inside a fireproof steel box lined with 8 inches of foam of every side in an anti-static bag.

But what you suggested works, yes. you can backup your boot drive to one and simply copy your storage drive to the other.

Ok. It should be better than what I have now: No backup at all.
I've read though that drives should be used every now and then beacuse they loose their magnetism or something, maybe just a hoax?

Everything can die anywhere, that's not the point. The whole point of backups is that you physically separate them as much as possible so that an event at place a only affects disk a, not b, and the other way around.

That's not something you have to worry about. bitrot by cosmic rays is much more likely.

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Yes, My point was that the backup drive was in said steel box; separate from the primary drive.

Okay, I get it. Maybe I'l get some kind of Hot Swap bay so I can easily make backups.