I've been using RAID 0 on all my machines for 10 years now. I've had a grand total of 2 die on me. I've lost zero data. RAID 0 is the simplest to set up and the most effective speed wise. Fancier solutions won't protect your data any better if you are an idiot user or lazy about backing up your data. Even if you aren't sooner or later either you'll get hit by a power surge or your house will burn down, and take your RAID 5 with it.
My basic rule set.
Rule 1: Never ever use your primary drive (C: Drive/where ever your OS is installed) for any type of data storage. Learned that lesson in the Win 98 days when it was as stable as Lindsay Lohand. Though the likelyhood of your OS spontaneously combusting these days have gone down drastically, it can and will suicide on you and take everything on the drive with it. Use your primary drive only to install programs and your OS on and you'll never go wrong.
Rule 2: Never trust a drive with anything important until it has been in solid use for at least 30 days. If it's going to break it will break immediately. Once it hits 6 months old it will out last its warrenty 90% of the time.
Rule 3: Once a drive hits 3 years old, don't be a cheap bastard, start shopping around for a replacement. It's living on borrowed time after 3 years. You can probably expect 5 years or more out of the high end newer ones. I have a pair of 128gb Raptors that are 7+ years old still going strong. Reguardless sell it/give it away or turn it into a sneaker net file transfer device, but don't use it for anything important anymore.
Rule 4: Never ever to the 12th power trust anything important to you to only 1 drive. At least 2 back ups. One which should be kept off site. The power thing took out all my buddies machines in one fell swoop, including his big RAID 5 setup that he was constantly telling me was superior to my "unreliable" RAID 0s, lucky for him we had been swapping HDs for back up/file transfer purposes for some time, so I had him back up and running in the time it took to mail a HD to him. The other was a guy at work, his house burned down taking everything including his external backup drive with it.