SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE TOO MUCH. WAY TOO COMPLICATED. .ENCS SHOULD BE BACKED UP NIGHTLY.
A little over killed but not that much. During my 30 years of IT former life dealing mostly large projects, I learned many hard lessons. Nothing is 100% foolproof, things might turn sour at last minutes.
AC backup has 3 paths to 3 different folders for backup and then send the backup file to a cloud drive somewhere. So I set one path to an internal hard drive backup folder, 2nd one to another folder in a different partition, same drive, the last one to a hardware encrypted external. This to set to run once every day and also to AC offsite backup (100 meg files in about 15-25 minutes). So this done automatically. To restore from an AC offsite backup we need to call AC and they might be not available or off hours.
For offsite backup to work, I have to exclude imported items and 'check' off site backup option. I only do full backup with imported items once a week, the .enc from 100 meg goes up to 10 gigs. This full backup would be used to restore a 2nd system. So both systems identical and exchangeable, not a real 'system' hot swap but 5 minutes switch over. How about that.
WHY IS FAULTY MOTHERBOARD AND COMPUTER A FULL BACKUP'S FAULT. A FULL RESTORE IS WHEN YOU LOSE ALL YOUR DATA. YOU DON'T HAVE TO RESTORE IT. IT'S JUST THAT A FULL BACKUP WOULD CONTAIN YOUR LOST FILES.
THE IDEA IS TO CHANGE YOUR HARD DRIVE BEFORE IT FAILS AND REBUILD RAID. SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED A HOT SPARE.
We have two level of backups here. A full computer backup and AC backups ( one full backup with imported items and another with charts data backup only ). Before win7, blue screen of death were more common (we still use XP), a restart might come up with 'NT loader not found' fatal, or a faulty board, a capacitor melt (now a day MBs use solid capacitors with much higher life span). If system fails, Raid set up become useless. If you happens to have another identical system then you could bring over you RAID drives and no interruption. If you don't have an identical config then with a switch over, RAID hard drive might be able to boot up your system but with their different chipset setups for old system, the stability is no longer there and mysterious errors happen. A full system restore would also include AC to the latest backup
Acronis software comes into play here. I only set Acronis to run full sytem back up twice a day, once at night and once during lunch break and the backup file is with an external drive. Aconis works well. I did a full system restore in about 20 minutes. To loose only half a day work if system fails.
With windows 7, Microsoft gone a long way. RAID is for redundancy also a good system back up option. Duplicate data entry or faster data entry per disc writing/reading limitation. But like you said garbage in, garbage out, if file missing then all drives do same, but if data corrupts then a hot swap would recover it, not with 2 drives fail. A system with one bad drive might not be bootable next time but you can hot swap the bad drive then a next restart be ok. With simple RAID, you have an extra identical data storage. RAID would not help in my case of missing files but help while you need an extra media to store data. I partitioned my hard drive, 2nd partition also to store a backup folder.
NOT SURE HOW MULTIPLE BOOT WOULD HELP. I THINK 24 HOURS IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE. IF NOT, YOU NEED CDP. YOU ALSO NEED BACKUPS BACK AT LEAST ONE TO TWO MONTHS. MINE GO BACK A YEAR. THIS IS THE PERFECT EXAMPLE. WHEN DID YOU LOSE THOSE FILES. COULD HAVE BEEN FIVE MONTHS AGO.
PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY BOOTING TO MULTIPLE OS IS A GOOD BACKUP ISSUE.
If system fails, software or virus related, the second boot can start up Windows and use the AC backup file to restore AC, almost no disruption in clinical time, so multiple boot almost same as Acronis but no need for a startup CDs, more works involved those. I am no longer multiple boot since I upgraded my servers last year. Most the time virus infested drive only effected the primary boot.
AGAIN I THINK SYNCING DATABASE TWICE AND BACKING UP WITH ACRONIS TWICE IS OVERKILL. AC LIKELY DID NOT LOSE YOUR FILES. NEITHER DID SYNCTOY.
AC CANNOT PUT IMPORTED ITEMS IN SQL. SQL CAN HOLD 4GBS. MANY USERS HAVE 10 OR 20 GBS OF IMPORTED ITEMS.
PERSONALLY, I WOULD JUST TAKE THE LOSS AND MAYBE MAKE A NEW BACK UP STRATEGY. MAYBE JUST COPY AND PASTE YOUR IMPORTED ITEMS FOLDER.
Hence AC not strong point. By using Sql express, AC not able to include Imported Items. A full mySQL probably better option. To leave out an important data section not fully logged and enclosed is a serious security and HIPPA risk.
I've been dealing with data intelligence and tetra (1000 Gig) size databases then were norm. A mere 4 gig data limitation is not a good excuse for AC despite its lower price usage cost. I need to look at Audit log per Jon suggestions to see if anything pointed to me. Copy and Paste not working for imported items. AC does not recognize copied files, I had to import them and doc to sign off all those reimported files (another option available to sign off all not yet preview imported items)
To run the AC missing links utility might be not a bad ideas once a while
