How to have two hard drives acting as one giant backup system?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Monkey With A Typewriter
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Monkey With A Typewriter

I'm going to build my own computer soon and was wondering if it's possible
to have two harddrives (about 120 Gig each) recording at once, running
everything as one.

I had bought a new computer 2 years ago and the hard drive died. I lost 80
hours of work.

I want to have the second hard drive as a sort of back up system incase one
dies on me.

Is this possible?

Is there any specific hardware I need to accomplish this?

Thanks
 
Monkey said:
I'm going to build my own computer soon and was wondering if it's possible
to have two harddrives (about 120 Gig each) recording at once, running
everything as one.

I had bought a new computer 2 years ago and the hard drive died. I lost
80 hours of work.

I want to have the second hard drive as a sort of back up system incase
one dies on me.

Is this possible?

Is there any specific hardware I need to accomplish this?
Click to expand...


You're talking about a mirror (raid 1) setup. This is NOT a raid 0 setup
like some on board controllers support and what most people are talking
about when they say "raid setup" http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html but is a
raid 1 setup that may require an add in PCI card to impliment

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_01.html

http://www.karbosguide.com/hardware/module5b2b.htm

Do a google search on raid 1
 
Monkey said:
I'm going to build my own computer soon and was wondering if it's possible
to have two harddrives (about 120 Gig each) recording at once, running
everything as one.

I had bought a new computer 2 years ago and the hard drive died. I lost 80
hours of work.

I want to have the second hard drive as a sort of back up system incase one
dies on me.

Is this possible?

Is there any specific hardware I need to accomplish this?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yes, you want to buy a motherboard with a built in RAID controller or
buy a PCI card RAID controller. One of the settings that RAID permits
is to have two same size/buffer drives running at the same time. It
makes it so that both drives are perfect copies of each other. If one
dies, you simply switch to the other drive and put in a new drive in
it's place.

HTH,

Ari


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message | I'm going to build my own computer soon and was wondering if it's possible
| to have two harddrives (about 120 Gig each) recording at once, running
| everything as one.
|
| I had bought a new computer 2 years ago and the hard drive died. I lost
80
| hours of work.
|
| I want to have the second hard drive as a sort of back up system incase
one
| dies on me.
|
| Is this possible?
|
| Is there any specific hardware I need to accomplish this?
|
| Thanks
|
|
|
| --
| Monkey With A Typewriter
| http://www.monkeywithatypewriter.com
| mailto:[email protected]

Keep in mind that RAID is not infallible. A glitch in the power supply
could take out both harddrives at once. If you have critical data that you
cannot live without, the safest way is to back up to removable storage.
This can be CD-ROM or harddrive that can be stored in a location away from
the computer. More trouble that RAID, but more secure.
 
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