Suggest a backup solution for a dual boot system?

[PenguinHatchling]

Hi. I posted a few days ago (thread title: Can Linux Handle my Computer) and got some good feedback.

At the time, I was trying to figure out how to get a RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays to work with Ubuntu.

I've been doing some more asking around and now think I'm better off just ditching RAID altogether in favor of a more traditional backup method.

Here's the setup I'm considering. Please feel free to critique anything I say here:

1 drive for Windows 7 system + applications (NTSF)
1 drive for Ubuntu or Mint or whatever + applications (ext3 or 4)
1 drive for data files, documents, itunes library, etc (NTFS)
1 drive for backing up the "data" drive (NTFS)

I'm planning to use Free File Sync to keep the "backup" drive up to date because there is a Windows and Linux version available for that software.

Will I have any problems with syncing and switching between Windows and linux? If I modify a file in Windows, then run Free File Sync in linux, will that cause problems or vice-versa?

Thanks for any help!

[aomimezura]

I know that with *extreme* care, you can make a bit for bit exact copy of your hard drive with dd. RAID is only really practical if you have at least 4 hard drives (or so) because parity bits take up a significant amount of space. I suppose RAID 0 is just an exact copy, though.

I've been using rsync to mirror files on two servers. It's a bit complicated to set up, but when used with cron, it's quite effective. It can be set to only update changed files so it won't take forever to backup.

You might also consider backing up to a cloud, but that usually costs money and I personally don't like the idea of sending my files over the internet.