Page 1 of Safety of data in Windows

This may very well belong in the PC forum but I hope the mods will allow it as it`s a general point about the safety of "My Docs".
From a recent thread you may have noticed that I had a Windows failure which lost me access to my hard disc. I`ve since managed to recover most of my data but only that which wasn`t stored in the My Docs folder.
Somebody correct me if I`m wrong but if you store all your stuff in My Docs it is part of the Windows system and more liable to be lost if Windows fails.
Although we should all back up on a regular basis, and I`m sure that would be Uncle Bills take on the matter, I`ll bet a lot of us don`t.
It seems to me that altering all your save defaults to an alternative folder outside the Windows sysem may be a safer alternative. This would apply to your favourites and PST file as well.
I`d be interested on everyone elses viewpoint on this.

Snaps

The general bet is to have a seperate partition for Data and one for the OS, in case the OS can`t boot or be read. This way the OS can simply be installed again. I have a seperate Raid Mirror for all Data and point Outlook and My Docs to that Partition.

This way if one disk fails and cant be read at all due to HDD fault then I still have a copy on the Other disk. The OS I don`t care about really as it can be reinstalled, although I mirror this too, you can never be 2 safe!!

Very sensible and I`ll be using a second drive (as I always used to) for my data in future but it just seems to be a sort of flaw in Windows that if the OS goes down so does your data.
Shouldn`t be beyond Uncle Bill and his little elves to prevent that.

Snaps

I have a similar setup. 2x 250Gig HDDs with a Raid Mirror. One 50gig paritition is used for the OS, the other 200Gig for data. Therefore if one drive fails I have a backup.

As an extra piece of security I have made a Ghost image of my OS parition (which is on the data parititon) so if the OS were to ever fail I can be up and running again quickly.