Setting Up Dual Sonnet Fusion/WD RE2 RAID 0 Arrays in Disk Utility

Question

I've just received my 2nd Sonnet Fusion 500P enclosure, 5 500GB WD RE2s, and the Sonnet Tempo E4P card. See this earlier thread for more info:
[http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6034612&#6034612]
I assembled everything with no trouble; drives into trays, trays into the enclosure, card into the Mac Pro, etc.; all went well.
Next, in Disk Utility I initialized the 5 drives, and set up a striped RAID O array. I used the largest RAID block size of 256K. And again, everything worked perfectly; I now have a 2.3 TB RAID setup mounted on my desktop.
Next, I created 2 folders on the RAID, one for all of my Final Cut Pro media files, and another for all my DVD Studio Pro media files. These files are currently stored on the individual (not RAIDed) drives in my first Sonnet Fusion enclosure. I'm now in the process of copying over all of the files to the new RAID.
When that's finished, my plan is this: I will shut down, and power down the original Sonnet enclosure. When I start up again, one by one, I will open up my FCP and DVDSP projects (the project files themselves are stored on my internal boot drive, and backed up to another internal drive) and when the media can't be found, I'll reconnect the project to the media on the RAID.
If this all goes well, I will then erase the individual drives in the first enclosure, and build a 2nd RAID 0; I'll copy/clone everything from the first RAID enclosure to the 2nd.
If you're still reading, does this sound like a safe way to do things? I want to reconnect everything while I still have 2 copies of all of the media files; once I have the 2nd RAID built, and everything is copied back to it, I'll have a backup of everything again. If there is a better, more secure way to do it, I'm open to suggestions.
And being somewhat new to RAID, one more question I have is, are drives in a RAID system more prone to failure than if they are running as stand-alone drives? I've used the WD RE2s a lot, and I like them; they seem very reliable. (I now have 14 of them, in total). But does the RAID system itself put the drives more at risk?
Thanks to those with the patience to read through this, and hopefully offer some advice.

Answer 1

Always have two backups or sets of data. If you are going to erase one set... then for a stretch of time you only have the one good copy I take it? I guess the originals would be one good set, so you are safe.
You realize you can unmount drives connected on Sonnet controllers, right? No need to shutdown your computer, just the enclosure(s). Couldn't tell if that is what you said anyway.
I don't use internal drives for backups, just external SATA and at least one on FireWire. One backup is always off line at any time. And enough juice on the UPS to carry me through what I am doing or can safely get past.
I just read one of AMUG/michael's post on a controller that supports hardware RAID and ability to map out bad sectors "on the fly" which is about the only time I worry about a failure. That, and UPS, and beware of OS patches and updates (one security update affected SeriTek on some G4/5s).
I'd say you've done a lot for being new to RAID - and using the same make/model/revision for all your drives helps a lot. Buying together, and having at least one 'spare' if one fails, is also good insurance.
Some poeple use 4 drives in a 5-drive enclosure. For heat and ventilation and because sometimes it might be ideal for performance. Never used or seen the 500P up close but I suspect it is well built.
You could build a 2nd 500P and either increase performance or capacity or use 2nd as backup. If you don't need to copy 1GB per minute, then a concatenated RAID fills drive A before putting data on B and is more secure than a stripped RAID but still shows up as one large volume.