Raid

[Beckyj636]

Hello all,


I have a 2nd computer its a dell 5100. The system drive is failing.

I bought 2 new sata internal drives . There identical.


I have Norton ghost 14. I want to copy the system drive (thats failing) to one on the 1teribyte drives. Then want to use the 2nd new drive to perform backups of the new system drive. Perhaps a RAID setup.

any ideas how to complete this project ??


Thanks

 

[WindowsStar]

Step 1: Ghost the old drive to the new drive.

Step 2: You can RAID the other drive to the newly ghosted drive, but I keep reading users that have RAID issues here. You might be best to just use the second drive as an image drive. Ghost the first drive to the second drive once a week or something to have a backup. Or make a Ghost image of the first drive to the backup drive once a week. Or you could use a good free backup software and backup your first drive to the second drive on a schedule.

Cobian Backup

 

[Beckyj636]

Thank you for your quick response.

 

[WindowsStar]

You are most welcome!

 

[loaba]

What you're talking about is RAID 1 (one drive mirrors the other).

Does your Dell have a hardware RAID controller? Do you have the driver? Is it Win 7 compatible? Hmm, maybe that ghost suggestion is where it's at...

 

[guiLe]

Hi Becky,
you can use RAID 1 for your HD array setting.
your HD will appear only in 1 drive with mirroring to the other drive.
so, if your system failed, you can replace or leave it in single drive with no interrupt.

 

[546 Inspiron]

You can install the new drives in raid 1 if you have raid hardware on your mobo, otherwise you will need to get raid software and driver. Make the change in your bios. With raid 1 both drives will be recognized as one and be identical down to the last byte. If 1 fails you can just replace that 1 like nothing happened but your total capacity will be the total of 1 drive. You can loose all your data from a virus attack, theft, fire, flood, etc., which is why I recommend a third external drive which is kept in a different location until needed to back up your important things.

 

[wangster]

If you have a separate drive (it sounds like you do since you mention system drive) I don't see why you would need a terabyte for the system drive. My system drive is approximately a 100 gb. That's what I've used since the Windows 98 days but I've noticed that with Windows 7, I may need a bigger system drive down the road.

If you have a RAID card in your computer, may I suggest the following? (Keep in mind that I'm no expert and this is only a suggestion that was given to me some years ago by some computer nerd so I just kept using this method all these years.)

1. Return the terabyte hard drive if you really intend on using that drive as a system drive with no data like music, videos, and etc.
2. Get two identical drives of smaller size as you'll never need a terabyte for a system drive. (I personally use 250 GB.)
3. Set up a RAID 0 (for performance) or RAID 1 (for redundancy).
4. Install Windows and all your apps in the system drive and back it up regularly.

On a side note, if you have Ghost, make a Ghost image right after installing Windows. That way, if you want to do a fresh install of Windows, you can use the Ghost image which is considerable faster than installing Windows again.

This is what I do personally.

1. Raid 0 (I chose this method since I don't need to worry about my data) with two 250 GB hard drives. I didn't need anything that big but they cost pennies more than 120 or 160 GB and with some going on sale, they were cheaper so I just used two 250 GB hard drives.
2. Install Windows then all the drivers.
3. Make Ghost image.
4. Install updates.
5. Install all the programs.
5. Make Ghost image.

I prefer to make my Ghost images on DVDs instead of hard drive and just keep them in a safe place.

But no set up is perfect for everyone. It all depends on what you're looking for.