The most reliable general solution on linux is 3Ware RAID cards, but linux software RAID generally works, as other posters have noted. If you are having persis

The most reliable general solution on linux is 3Ware RAID cards, but linux software RAID generally works, as other posters have noted. If you are having persistent problems, you should search carefully for a flaky hardware cause. Are the drives in an external sata enclosure that might have a barrel-type power connector that is sometimes jiggled ? Are all the problems always on the same motherboard -- perhaps it has a bad IDE controller ? Are the drives overheating ? If your drives support it, try to use the smartmon tools to see if one or both is having errors. Also, consider writing a script to dump and archive the output of smartctl -a . Next time you have an issue, look at those outputs over time, and in addition to the badblocks and so on, look at the recorded number of times the disk has been powered up, and see if this is consistent with the number of times the computer has been rebooted. I have done a lot of RAID stuff, and currently I am moving away from it and making servers that have just one disk in them. The reason is, is that I have decided that the best way to acheive reliability is to have two copies of any important computer. RAID sometimes seems to introduce more problems that it solves, and switching to a second machine that is maintained by rsync is quick and always works.