I see I should have given more information. My hardware is a Vaio VGN-AW290 running Windows Vista 64 bit. I have a 3 disc recovery disc set that Windows created. I also have the drive backed up to an external hard drive and online using crashplan.
So anyway, I don't know if this is a hardware or software RAID, but maybe the information I just provided helps to figure that out. I'm not really biased toward one way or the other to resolve this issue, and it's usually about a month between errors, so I've been procrastinating about it. And it's possible for the problem to be with the controller and not the drive, right? In which case, going through the effort of replacing a drive wouldn't be productive. So after this additional information, what would you recommend?
Clonezilla Software Raid 0
I definitely have space on an external HD to store all of C: if needed. I'd be limited to USB 2 speeds. If you have a Hardware Raid via ICH or a controller the Operating System (Win, Linux, Mac) sees the Raid as one Hard Disk, hence the Data will be imaged in whole no matter which tool you use. With this backup/clone you can proceed whichever way you want (as you described) If you are running a Software Raid or put one of the Raid-Disks in some external HDD Adapter you will be able to access the Stripe individually (although access is kinda misleading, it will be an unknown/unrecognized Volume with a lot of garbage). If you want to clone only that single Stripe you do need a Sector-By-Sector clone.
Looking at 500GB Raid 0 (2x250GB) full of data there will be a significant difference. In the first case you will always backup/clone 500GB of Data. In the second case you would be able to clone only 250GB (one of the Disks) and replace it.
But as mentioned before cloning a single Stripe is not the safest option. It can and should work but there is no guarantee. RAID 0 can be hard to backup, thanks to it splitting your data up over two hard drives, rather than one. I've used multiple methods of backing up RAID 0 drives and some methods have worked for me and others have not. Of the two methods I've used most (Clonezilla and Windows 7's disk imaging utility) the most effective has been Windows 7. That's because ICH10R treats two RAIDed drives as a single hard drive; it's just easier creating a system image, replacing the damaged drive and then copying the image onto the RAID array.
From my experiences, swapping out a failing drive is a snap. In Windows 7 you simply go to 'backup and restore' and choose 'create a system image' from the left pane. Now you'll need a large external drive capable of holding the complete system image (sorry about that, but it is easier this way). Remember to also make a bootable 'System Repair Disc' from this same pane. Once you have both the system repair disc and the system image, install the new drive (which should have already been initialized) and boot using the system repair disk. Then go through the restore from image process.
If Windows 7 isn't your style, Clonezilla includes RAID support and you can simply clone the damaged drive. However, this method has never worked for me, for whatever reason. I've used it in other applications and it's amazing. But so far, it just hasn't proven itself for RAID 0.By the way, I'm also assuming you are using a mobile version of the ICH10R Southbridge, rather than a software RAID 0 (the motherboard component controlling your hard drives). If you have a software RAID, this may not work.
The reason is that a chipset RAID is handled at the BIOS level, whereas software RAID is handled by the operating system and is notoriously difficult to work with, particularly when dealing with recoveries.