giving up on software RAID in OSX

I give up on software RAID. After recently purchasing a new cam corder that used only memory cards it hit me that there was no long term backup of the movies of my children, and that I really did want to enjoy them in my old age and I better back them up somehow. I decided to forgo purchasing a hardware RAID case and just try the built in software RAID in OSX. I was already using one of these fancy Western Digital 1TB Firewire 800 drives so I placed an order for a second one and raided them together. For a while this seemed OK, but they just don't make me comfortable. Several times I've plugged them in only to have the computer go into rebuilding mode on them, as if something happened to one or the other. They also wont spin down after I unmount and unplug them from the computer, they sit there spinning away their MTBF when they should be asleep. This was the most annoying of all of their quirks, why wouldn't the bridge chip in there spin them down while they were disconnected? It would put them to sleep while they were connected, it put them to sleep before I RAIDed them together. They also dont mount properly all the time. Sometimes I plug them in and they refuse to mount to the left hand column in a finder window. They ARE mounted, if you go to the /Volumes directory or the Computer folder in the finder you can find it, it's available to iMovie, but it bothers me that it fails to show up like any other disk. Lately it's gotten even weirder, the RAID mounts (but doesn't show on the desktop) and another copy of it mounts under the same name but with just a regular folder icon that DOES show up on the desktop. When I access that only 1 of the 2 disks shows activity, like one of the 2 RAID volumes is mounted by itself. This is read only though, if you try to write to that it gives you a permissions error. Thats just too weird and I can't accept this is a reliable condition. Perhaps a hardware RAID is in my future for them, but software raid fails the sanity check. So I've un-RAIDed them. I now have one that is my first home movie disk and I have a "naked" 1TB drive that I insert into that toaster looking interface whenever I import new video and use rsync to sync the 2 disks. I also use a Turbo 264 to convert the HD video to just AppleTV quality and burn it to DVD's. Between those 3 places to save it I expect my family home movies will survive as long as I am around to take care of them. Ultimately for long term storage there just isn't any full proof solution that any normal person could afford for their home movies. A "living" backup is whats necessary. In a few years, or if the disks ever start to have problems I will backup the data from the remaining source and move it to a new drive. And I'll do that my whole life if necessary as I accumulate more footage. There just isn't a way to disconnect and bury data that makes sure it survives forever. Finished edited adventures of the children I'll also upload and share with the family. So copies of that will exist around. Those will also get burned to DVD and distributed to grandparents and such. These backup solutions really only apply to the raw footage. So I've unraided my movies, and gained a new and bigger Time Machine disk for other backups. If you're considering messing with a software raid in OSX, you might want to reconsider and go with a hardware solution that really aren't that much more expensive.