Local image storage
Wanted to share a Windows image storage solution that will help you deal with single drive failures. A word of caution, though, it won't be as convenient for laptops - there is no quick removal option for this, so you will have to shut down the laptop before detaching the storage. For Mac users, you can still use a hard drive enclosure similar to the one above, but you need to use the Apple's equivalent of what is described here. See the mirror option on this page:
support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/disk-utility/dskua23150fd/mac
Enclosure
First, you buy a hard drive enclosure that can hold 2 or 4 drives. The one in the photo above (HF2-SU3S2) is an older USB 3.0 model and it costs about $140 CAD. The newer HF2-SU31C has a faster USB 3.1 interface and costs about $200 CAD. These enclosures do not have a hardware RAID option, which is what you would need for this (and it also costs less).
Hard Drives
Any hard drives will work for this, even different capacities, so you can put 2 drives 2 TB each or one 2TB drive, one 1 TB and two 500 GB drives - it will all work the same. You can buy a 2 TB hard drive for about $80 CAD, so the whole solution with the new enclosure and two drives to start will cost you $200 + $80 x 2 = $360 CAD and will provide 2 TB of automatically duplicated storage. That is, if any single drive fails, Windows will tell you that and you will replace the bad drive and Windows will copy all the data on its own.
Automatic Power-off
With any enclosure, before you put any data on it, see how it handles inactivity. The one above turns off automatically after a minute, which is not a good thing - you need to hold the Power Sync button on the right for 3 seconds, so it switches to a power sleep mode - when the computer is inactive, the enclosures just goes to sleep.
Setting up Storage Spaces
Once you have everything set up, click Start and type Storage Spaces. Create a drive pool, which will list all the new unformatted drives, and will combine all drives you have in the enclosure into a single storage pool. Now you can create a mirrored storage space - each will appear as an ordinary Windows drive, but data will be automatically distributed across all drives and each bit of data will be duplicated on two drives.
Windows allows you pick any storage space size, so you can create a 4 TB storage space with just two 2 TB drives and Windows will make it read-only once it reaches about 70% capacity of current drives and will ask you to add drives. For this reason, choose the storage size that is exactly or less than half the capacity of all your drives (e.g. if you have 2 drives, each 2 TB, create a storage space that is 2 TB - this is because of data duplication).
Again, you have to shut down the computer if you want to detach the enclosure. You cannot just yank the USB cable - you will lose data if you do that.
If any of the drives goes bad, Windows will warn you and you will buy another drive, attach it to the computer and tell Windows to remove a faulty drive and it will copy all data to the new drive from the remaining good drives. If the enclosure is full when this happens, you may need an external drive dock to plug in the extra drive while you transfer the data.
Similarly, if you have only two drives in the enclosure, you can add one or two more at any time and Windows will distribute all data onto all three or four drives.
Local image storage
Wanted to share a Windows image storage solution that will help you deal with single drive failures. A word of caution, though, it won't be as convenient for laptops - there is no quick removal option for this, so you will have to shut down the laptop before detaching the storage. For Mac users, you can still use a hard drive enclosure similar to the one above, but you need to use the Apple's equivalent of what is described here. See the mirror option on this page:
support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/disk-utility/dskua23150fd/mac
Enclosure
First, you buy a hard drive enclosure that can hold 2 or 4 drives. The one in the photo above (HF2-SU3S2) is an older USB 3.0 model and it costs about $140 CAD. The newer HF2-SU31C has a faster USB 3.1 interface and costs about $200 CAD. These enclosures do not have a hardware RAID option, which is what you would need for this (and it also costs less).
Hard Drives
Any hard drives will work for this, even different capacities, so you can put 2 drives 2 TB each or one 2TB drive, one 1 TB and two 500 GB drives - it will all work the same. You can buy a 2 TB hard drive for about $80 CAD, so the whole solution with the new enclosure and two drives to start will cost you $200 + $80 x 2 = $360 CAD and will provide 2 TB of automatically duplicated storage. That is, if any single drive fails, Windows will tell you that and you will replace the bad drive and Windows will copy all the data on its own.
Automatic Power-off
With any enclosure, before you put any data on it, see how it handles inactivity. The one above turns off automatically after a minute, which is not a good thing - you need to hold the Power Sync button on the right for 3 seconds, so it switches to a power sleep mode - when the computer is inactive, the enclosures just goes to sleep.
Setting up Storage Spaces
Once you have everything set up, click Start and type Storage Spaces. Create a drive pool, which will list all the new unformatted drives, and will combine all drives you have in the enclosure into a single storage pool. Now you can create a mirrored storage space - each will appear as an ordinary Windows drive, but data will be automatically distributed across all drives and each bit of data will be duplicated on two drives.
Windows allows you pick any storage space size, so you can create a 4 TB storage space with just two 2 TB drives and Windows will make it read-only once it reaches about 70% capacity of current drives and will ask you to add drives. For this reason, choose the storage size that is exactly or less than half the capacity of all your drives (e.g. if you have 2 drives, each 2 TB, create a storage space that is 2 TB - this is because of data duplication).
Again, you have to shut down the computer if you want to detach the enclosure. You cannot just yank the USB cable - you will lose data if you do that.
If any of the drives goes bad, Windows will warn you and you will buy another drive, attach it to the computer and tell Windows to remove a faulty drive and it will copy all data to the new drive from the remaining good drives. If the enclosure is full when this happens, you may need an external drive dock to plug in the extra drive while you transfer the data.
Similarly, if you have only two drives in the enclosure, you can add one or two more at any time and Windows will distribute all data onto all three or four drives.