RAID vs cloud backup for personal data, which one do you actually need?

[GhostRider63]

Trying to actually protect my personal files properly, is a RAID setup at home enough, or do I need cloud backup too, or is that overkill for just personal use?

[DarkSideRichard47]

RAID protects against a single drive failing, it does not protect against theft, fire, flood, accidental deletion, or ransomware, since all your drives are still sitting in the same physical location and often mirrored instantly, meaning a mistake gets copied everywhere at once too

Cloud backup protects against exactly those scenarios since your data lives somewhere physically separate, but it depends entirely on your internet connection for both backup and recovery, and ongoing subscription costs add up over time compared to a one time hardware purchase

The honest answer for anyone serious about protecting personal data is both, RAID for fast recovery from a simple drive failure without needing to redownload anything, cloud backup as the actual disaster recovery layer for the scenarios RAID can't touch at all. Relying on RAID alone gives a false sense of security since it solves a much narrower problem than most people assume