Ok, long story short, purchase a D-Link DNS-320 Network Attached Storage device as a central storage location and backup for my home network. This model can hold two drives.

I will make periodic offsite backups, but I was attracted to the option to set this up as RAID 1. I understand the main benefit of RAID 1 is that if one HD fails, the other one keeps working seamlessly. What is not clear is what happens if the RAID controller hardware fails?! Can I take a HD and plug it into andy computer or external hard drive enclosure and read it? Or do I need another RAID controller? Or do I need the SAME RAID controller?

In other words, if I don't absolutely need uninterrupted service, should I set it up as RAID 1 or just two normal seperate volumes? I could then theoretically manually back up one drive to the other and remove it for offsite storage...

The other options are: RAID 0 (which is faster but doubles the likelyhood of total failure) or JBOB (two drives look like one big one, perhaps with the same drawback as RAID 0). I don't think I want either of those.

Thanks.