Here is my advice, and what I do. I would separate your boot drive from your archive/documents/media/work drive. Make your boot drive an SSD or Raid 0. Your boot drive can have all your work applications and games or whatnot. Back it up via a software image backup.
For your archive/working/media drive, through it into a Raid 1 or multiple raid ones. This way you have the safest type of redundancy for your data.
This is what I have going on at the moment:
WD Black 640GB boot drive (soon getting an SSD)
(2) WD Black 1TB Raid 1 – Current Projects/documents/music
(2) Hitachi Green 3TB Raid 1 – Archive of old projects
As far as backing up your items for the crossover, I would move all your documents/media to an external with a backup, and then make an image of your boot drive with all of your applications. Throw that on some drives as well.
https://www.VigilanteHD.com