Unfortunately I can't use software RAID1 because of this:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2008-March/096063.html
First, you should probably get your applications from a company that doesn't hate its customers... But aside from that, this restriction should only apply to the place where you install the app, not where you store your own work. Why don't you ghost-image (or use the free and very nice clonezilla-live) your system disk for a quick bare-metal restore, and put your own work on a separate raid-mirrored partition? And since you seem to be very paranoid about your disks, use some other backup mechanism like rsync to another location at some frequent intervals too.
Yeah I agree they are difficult to deal with sometimes. And expensive.
I agree the restriction should only apply to the place where I install the application. I told them that two years ago and they said that's the way their software is designed, to prevent installation if RAID 1 is detected, that's what the tech support guy told me anyway. They want to prevent someone from taking a mirrored drive and giving it to someone else to use on a different machine. They told me this two years ago not sure if they have the same policy though - but my version is about two years old.
I could clone just my data somehow on a seperate drive or backup (not the applications and OS), yet I also want to clone the entire OS and applications that's where most of the time goes into as far as restoring a disk or buying a new disk is concerned. I'm paranoid because I've had 3 crashes in the past 4 years and it's always a pain delays my work for days. SATA drives are made cheap compared to server grade SCSI's. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008