Eugene's observations

I have just found another reason for avoiding off-the-shelf computers to add to my list at http://1computercare.co.uk/pitfalls.htm

This came to light this week when I investigated a client's Dell Dimention 9200 that has two hard disk drives configured as a RAID 0 stripe set. Normally, the first thing I do on receiving a PC in my workshop is take an image backup of the entire disk. That way, damage to files is limited (and I can recover if anything goes wrong). However, with RAID sets as the controller is separate from the disks, I can not take a backup in the normal way.

In this client's case it turned out that bad sectors were found on one disk, so the entire set had to be repaired.

The choice for those with RAID sets is to either pay much more when a repair is required, or risk loosing anything that is not already backed up. So the advice remains to take backup copies of important files frequently and always buy a custom built PC - similar prices initially and far cheaper in the long term.