2 hard drives, one a copy of the other, is it posible?

[FFMG]

Hi,

I have Win 7 Ultimate x64, (it's a home PC so I have admin/full access/rights).

I am not 100% sure what the right terminology is but what I would like it to have a constant back up of my 'master' drive.

The idea been that if one drive fails, the computer will auto-magically 'switch' to the other drive, (if the ones that failed was the master).
I would then go to the shop, get a new drive, and, (granted, after a short delay), both drives will be carbon copies of each other waiting for the next failure.

So my questions are:
1- Is it possible with windows 7, (if it is, how can I set it up).
2- What is the correct term of what I am trying to do?
3- If Win 7 cannot do it, could a kind soul direct me toward a tool that can offer such a real time backup?

PS: I know it is possible to have weekly/daily backups, but that does not really offer 'fall-over'. It would still take me an extremely long time to get my system back up and running.

Many thanks

FFMG

 

[whs]

What you are trying to do is called a 'clone'. But it is no good for what you are trying to accomplish because:

1. after a very short time, the clone will be out of sync with your operational system
2. there is no way to start a clone automatically. It will always require human intervention.

Images are much more practical for what you want. An image restore takes 10 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the image and the speed of the disks. And taking an image takes between 5 and 20 minutes - again depending on the above parameters. But that can run in the background.

The secret is the frequency of imaging. If you do it daily, you can never lose more than 1 day's of work, if you do it weekly you lose max. 1 week's of work, etc.

I recommend free Macrium. It has proven to be robust, reliable and fast. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

 

[logicearth]

RAID 1 is what you are after. RAID 1 creates a mirror copy of a HDD with another.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_1

RAID 1 with the built in System Restore and Previous Version in Windows 7 make it very reliable.