RAID or nah?

[Commander_Dork]

I have a friend who is the secretary of a small school and they want to have back ups of important data from their computer and they need to make sure that their computer is up and running at all times. 
Should I use RAID mode or should I just make sure to have a dedicated drive for backing up data. I’m not too familiar with RAID and it’s pros or cons vs a typical back up

[jaslion]

RAID IS NOT BACKUP!!!!!

 

Now that that is out of the way. What will the setup be? You can have a raid array for the server and then back it up to another server with a raid array or the cloud.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Is this a windows PC?

 

If your goal is to keep your data safe, Id setup a backup program to a external HDD. Then you can swap them easily if needed(have an offsite copy).

 

Id also look at cloud backup programs in case the building burns down or malware destroys the data on the pc and the backups disk.

 

Does the school have IT? Id let them deal with this.

[Applefreak]

16 minutes ago, Commander_Dork said:

I have a friend who is the secretary of a small school and they want to have back ups of important data from their computer and they need to make sure that their computer is up and running at all times. 
Should I use RAID mode or should I just make sure to have a dedicated drive for backing up data. I’m not too familiar with RAID and it’s pros or cons vs a typical back up

RAID is not a backup solution. It increases the reliability of a running system. You want to keep backups on external drives. If it is a really small school and budget is tight / no dedicated IT staff, I'd look into cloud backups, that is if the internet is fast and reliable. Something like MS OneDrive works well by basically uploading the entire user directory into the cloud. There are some privacy concerns with cloud solutions of course but for the less experienced users it is a mostly set and forget solution that works well. There are other solutions like that but if they use Windows, setting it up takes the least amount of effort and maintenance. In addition, keep backups on external drives as well but make sure they are stored securely. RAID would only come into play if the school decided it needed a dedicated server that was on 24/7 to handle backups and file storage on a larger scale.

[The_Mole]

As jaslion said before: RAID is not backup.

However, it will protect you (or her in that case) from a hard drive failure but not from like viruses, ransomware, etc.

Wherever I hear from, schools are notoriously underfunded, so there may be no server for backups and cloud backups might interfere with data protection regulations, at least in the EU. If you can raise the funds, get at least a NAS with at least 2 drives in RAID 1 and backup her PC to the NAS every night.
If anything happens to her tin, swap it if needed, restore the backup and you're good.

Assuming standard secretary tasks, a Synology DS220j and 2x 4TB WD Purple should suffice. You can get the complete package for ~350 bucks, depending on your location.

If possible, place the NAS in a different building or at least a different room than the PC. In case of like a fire, a burglary or similar, one event should not be able to destroy both.

[Commander_Dork]

Thanks for the advice guys! Yeah, I’m the unofficial IT Guy unpaid (long story why) for the school and it is a very small private school. I attempted a NAS but due to multiple factors it didn’t work out. She had an HDD set up but has had multiple problems with it and as someone who has a job I don’t have the time to be helping out very often. I’m looking for a solution that would be essentially plug n play with minimal issues. And unfortunately for me she often accidentally counters the work I’m doing as she likes to think she’s good with tech but ehhh she’s not lol. In regards to RAID, I’ve only hear a little bit about it and never researched it so thank you for clarifying that. Trying any paid services wouldn’t be good as they are a very low budget school.