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setotitan
02-22-07, 02:33 PM
OK so I got a question. I've heard that you can hook your system up to copy exactly whats on your main HD to a back up HD. So that if your computer was ever to crash you can just plug in your back up HD and viola! you can pick up without skipping a beat. I believe this is "mirroring" :confused: I'm not 100% on that, that's why I'm checking.

If that is the case I could use some advice on picking a program to set it up with. If that's not the case can someone please tell me what it's called and what program I need to use to do it. I bought Acronis True Image 10. From everything I've read when it comes to backing up your system it's either True Image or Ghost. Would this be the right program to set up a mirror HD? If not what program do you recommend?

Lastly, the whole point of setting up an additional HD to mirror your main drive is to protect yourself in case of a crash or infection, right. Well if you have a drive mirroring bit for bit what your main HD is doing wouldn't it be susceptible to the same crash or infection? I mean putting aside physical problems with your main HD. Wouldn't it copy the same virus, trojan, ect over to your mirrored HD causing it to fail as well? This is most baffling, can someone with some tenure help me out here. :bang head
CGR
02-22-07, 02:43 PM
Hello :welcome: to the forums.

Its refered to as Raid 1. Two drives have identical data written to them for redundancy.

This can be done a few different ways.

1. Through your motherboard if it has an onboard Raid controller

2. Through an add in adapter.

3. Through the OS itself.

The first two are what I would recommend first. Software raid through the OS can lead to some problems.

If you have a newer motherboard then it most likely has a raid controller onboard. Not all do but many do. If it does it should tell you how to set it up. You have to use black hard drives to setup any raid. You lose everything on the drives when you do this..
setotitan
02-22-07, 02:45 PM
CGR,

Thanks for the quick response and the helpful information. One question then, where would I go to check if my motherboard is set to do RAID?
CGR
02-22-07, 02:52 PM
The manual that came with the board would explain it if it has it. It may have even come with a separate manual for the raid setup.
Doomshanked
02-22-07, 04:46 PM
Sorry if this leads away, but does that mean that if one were to get a larger hard drive to upgrade from a smaller one, they would need to install everything again rather than just copy the contents?
CGR
02-22-07, 06:33 PM
Raid 1 requires two drives, so if you were upgrading from two small drives to two large ones you would create the new raid on the large drives.

Best thing would be to take an image of your system before you upgrade. Norton Ghost or Acronis Trueimage would work. Once you have the image on a separate drive other than the raid you can just restore the image to the new raid setup.

That goes for single drives as well. Take an image then install the image on the new hard drive.

You could also have two separate raid 1 setups, then copy your files over, however you would need to re-install windows on the new larger raid setup and make it bootable.
tuskenraider
02-22-07, 08:59 PM
Sorry if this leads away, but does that mean that if one were to get a larger hard drive to upgrade from a smaller one, they would need to install everything again rather than just copy the contents?If you mean just replacing one at a time, no you wouldn't have to reinstall, you'd just rebuild the array. You would lose any of the extra space the is more than the smaller drive though.
Doomshanked
02-22-07, 11:01 PM
If you mean just replacing one at a time, no you wouldn't have to reinstall, you'd just rebuild the array. You would lose any of the extra space the is more than the smaller drive though.

I should clarify >< I'm upgrading from an 80GB IDE to a 320GB SATA so I can (somehow, haven't done this before) copy it all to the 320 and it will boot from there, no?
tuskenraider
02-22-07, 11:56 PM
I suppose this is off-topic since I'm getting that you have no RAID1 array? In either case, you could use a disk cloning utility that hard drive manufacturers usually include with their drive if it's retail or can be downloaded at their site. You could also use a free imaging program called DriveImage XML (http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm).
Doomshanked
02-23-07, 07:04 PM
I suppose this is off-topic since I'm getting that you have no RAID1 array? In either case, you could use a disk cloning utility that hard drive manufacturers usually include with their drive if it's retail or can be downloaded at their site. You could also use a free imaging program called DriveImage XML (http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm).

Yeah I was offtopic >< Thanks though, that cleared it all up. I don't want to put the new drive in and not have the comp boot up =X