Adding RAID to my computer

Solution 1:

Find the manual that came with your machine, it should contain instructions.

Your board probably won't support RAID10, so RAID1 is you best bet. For this, you'll need to get another drive the same size as your current one. Sometimes on home machines, only 2 of the ports on the MB can be used for RAID, so you need to make sure you plug in the correct one. As long as RAID is enabled in your BIOS, you should get an option to manage your RAID on boot, it's often on F8 (after they give you the option to go into setup). You'll then have to create a RAID1 array, with your two disks in. You need to be VERY careful here, if you have the disks the wrong way round, you will end up with two blank disks. Triple check before you do this, different makes of drives makes it a bit easier. Because it's going to be crappy software RAID, you might have to install their drivers for Windows, although they may already be there.

To be honest, RAID isn't your best option here. Disk failure is actually pretty rare, and any corruption/deletion of a file won't be heled by RAID. You might want to look at a service like Carbonite, which gives you automatic, offsite backups, for $55 a year, which will give you protection against deleting a file, or losing both your machine and your backups, in a fire, for example.

Solution 2:

I use Dropbox for backups of important documents. It securely backs-up files as soon as you hit the save button. For free, you get 2GB of storage (more if you use referrals) and 30 days of revision history of all files. Plus there is a client program for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.