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Questions about mirroring my windows boot partition SSD to a standard drive...

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blackjackel

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2002
Location
Los Angeles
So, I have an SSD with my windows partition that I boot from.

I also have a standard slow-*** drive that I want to mirror this on, I deleted the volume and selected "add mirror":

Question 1:

It gives me a popup window saying that it will convert the disc to dynamic which will make it so I can't start an operating system from any volume on the disk other than the current boot volume.

What I understood was that I can still start my windows but I can't install another windows version on another partition on the same disk and boot that, right?



Question 2: IF i do mirror from my SSD to a slow regular drive, will this slow down my SSD to the speed of that other drive? OR will the other drive simply mirror stuff in the background until it catches up to the SSD? (so that speed is not compromised)?
 
Yea, you willnot be able to dual boot linux or XP, from those drives.

And yea, will probably run about the speed of the slower drive.

I think the thing to maybe do is clone your os and whatever you can to the SSD and then expand it onto the other drive if you know what I mean, you can make them both seem as one drive. But that may be compromised if one of them dies.

Any way you do that I would suggest doing some kind of backup or something you can restore or re-install from though.
 
i find it more usefull to manually "clone", using normal "image" backup methods to the hard drive, and change nothing from the normal disk types?

Simple image of the SSD:
backup the SSD to the HD, as a backup image (file) , if anything goes wrong you can return the image to that ssd or a new one.
( do not use sector by sector backup methods for SSD)

Boot the same system on SSD or HD:
backing up the SSD to some HD using "image", and restoring that image, to the Boot partition on the HD for having 2 SAME bootable systems, one on the SSD one on the HD , manually created when the system on the SSD is 100% operational and virus free.
if the SSD should ever fail or get ruined , you can just hop over to the HD booting from the bios, without skipping a beat.

Image 2 seperate Boot systems one on the HD, and one on the SDD: (make it more complex)
if you have 2 different bootable systems on first partititons of any 2 disks, you can "Image" these bootable partititions to a compressed Image file on a hard disk somewhere.
if either of them get damaged , fail to operate, or get virus filled, you just return back to a previously stored image file of them.
Unlike shifting 1 bootable image between 2 bootable devices, this method just has 2 Images stored on the disk, only because you have 2 different boot OSes.
My opinion of having 2 different bootable systems is, most people dont have full control of ONE system, untill you gain full control of one, you will never have full control of 2, so pick one that works, and control it.

the Difference between Imaging a "clone" of the system manually, and Continuous mirroring, is you can return back to a previos state of operation, without a re-install, even if the problem was not HARD but a software problem. You can have multiple image files of a operational system partititon, to return back to a previous state of operation.
Say you stored June 2011 and also have stored Sept 2011, and spetember sucks, you just retract back to june.

even with a SSD i think more people could benefit from a image backup of thier system drive for the purpose of sofware and virus survival, more than for the purpose of the disk failing which is when mirroring comes in handy.

It is not as complex as it sounds, i just cant write it well yet. I do know one thing though, done properly I have never had to do a full re-install from a MS CD, in a decade, and i am virtually immune to most of the stupid things that software and myself can do to the system. Plus if a hardware disk actually fails, then that is covered too.

Mirroring is best for the SERVERS, and solid perfected unchanging systems , that can have a disk fail a lot faster than a user can screw something up.
or for people who do nothing on thier computers, or corperate computers.
Having multiple Images of a bootable parttition, is way more usefull for people adding and removing software and drivers and stuff.

then add to that some backup method for "Data" Also. which has little to do with the "system"
.
 
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