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Hi Guys,
I am thinking about using a Raid 1 setup, to mirror my HDD, in my Computer, i would appreaciate it if someone could tell me whats involved in this process, or give me some info on the subject. The only reason i wan't to do this, is because i could do with a new external HDD, as the one i have got now is a little small, also its just a hassel trying to remember to backup.
Thanks

P.S. Purely for some background info, i currently have a single 640GB HDD, and that is what i would like to mirror. Oh and btw i am using Vista.

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Ed


Canon 40D + Grip | Sigma 10-20 EX | 17-85 | Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX II | 50 F/1.8 | 430 EX II + Other Stuff
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Hi Ed,

I think your first port of call may be your motherboard manual. If it supports RAID 1 then that saves a few pennies which would otherwise have to be spent on a controller card.

More knowledgeable members may have a workaround but I think you'll find that adding a second hard drive (same size and similar performance) and configuring the two as RAID from the BIOS means wiping the first disk. If you can't effectively back it up then that means getting two new disks for your array and using the current disk as a, possibly temporary, D: drive so you can copy your data across to the new array after you've installed an OS. At least one of the drivers will be different on the OS because of the RAID so I'm not sure that using Norton Ghost is going to work as far as restoring a disk image is concerned.

This may all be sounding rather negative and I'll make it worse by observing that using a second drive inside your computer to guard against failure won't help you in the event of either a power spike or theft. My own preference would be to first spend my pennies on more removable storage and only after that spend money inside the computer. But that's me and others may have equally valid (or better) strategies.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Thanks for the insight Bob, that has certainly cleared some things up, although the only thing which i am not s keen about is having to wip my current HDD of it's data when setting up a raid array. I will see if my motherboard supports Raid 1/ Raid at all. Anyway, any other inputs to this subject would be very welcome.

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Ed


Canon 40D + Grip | Sigma 10-20 EX | 17-85 | Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 EX II | 50 F/1.8 | 430 EX II + Other Stuff
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Personally I would not build a raid system.
Indeed it would mirror your hard drive, but I will also mirror every mistake you make. I invested in some specific backup software, that backs up all my pictures and documents incrementally once a day.
That way when I make a mistake I can always go back to my backup, and I still have the benefit of automatic backups.

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www.pimvandevelde.com

I part agrees with Schultze's comment - a mirror is only insurance against a failing hard disk. It does not protect you from, for example, accidental corruption, deletion etc.

Recently I went for a soft mirror I guess it might be called. I use SyncBack to copy from one hard disk to another (remote), so I have two copies. I run it manually, but it could be scheduled too.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Why not get a 1TB external HD and use software to make incremental backups at the time interval of your choosing. It protects you against the hardware failure of your main drive and any user error and unlike a RAID array, if your entire computer were to fail (lets say the power supply failed) it would not go down with the rest of the computer.

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Graham
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You don't say if you are running a Mac or PC. If you have a Mac with OS 10.5 or higher you just plug in an external drive and turn on Time Machine. This will give you incremental backups of any drives you select until your time machine volume is full. It will then start to delete the oldest backup and replace them with the most up to date data.

There are many pieces of software that can do similar things on Windows.

Advantages of the incremental backup system are that you can recover accidentally deleted files (within a set time period) as well as going back to previous versions of files (handy if you have saved over an old version of something).

I set up my drives in Raid 0 (striped) with the vista disk manager. It's a software-based approach though, so expect a bit more CPU utilisation when transferring files.

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Where does raid 0 come into data safety?

But on that note, I vaguely recall windows can do mirrors of dynamic volumes, although in standard MS crippleware fashion they disallow the selection of it on "lower" versions.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.