Mirroring IDE Hard Drives

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Guest

I read somewhere that you can use Windows XP Pro to make a software mirror of
IDE Hard Drives. Does anyone know how to do this?
 
Windows XP does not have a native software-based mirror
option. In order to configure a mirror, you'll need to setup a
RAID configuration. This requires two identical hard
drives, a motherboard with RAID or a RAID controller
card. Then you must install Windows XP from scratch.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

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:

| I read somewhere that you can use Windows XP Pro to make a software mirror of
| IDE Hard Drives. Does anyone know how to do this?
| --
| Phil
 
Toss the other replies,they seem to not know how to operate an xp pc.To
mirror an IDE hd to another is simple,set the new drive to slave on same IDE
chain as C: Format the new drive with a primary partition,then go to
run,type:
XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in the DOS window,once its
thru,youre
finished.Also,D: being the slave drive but if asigned diffrent letter,then
use that.
 
Please explain more. How does this create a RAID 1 mirror.
wouldn't you have to keep xcoping from one drive to the other
manually? while with a raid 1 it would be done automatically in
the background.
 
Andrew said:
Toss the other replies,they seem to not know how to operate an xp
pc.To mirror an IDE hd to another is simple,set the new drive to
slave on same IDE chain as C: Format the new drive with a primary
partition,then go to run,type:
XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in the DOS window,once its
thru,youre
finished.Also,D: being the slave drive but if asigned diffrent
letter,then use that.
Click to expand...

Not only is this technically incorrect, if followed it will not even give
you an exact copy of drive C:. It in no way has anything to do with RAID or
mirroring. A mirror is two drives that are updated simultaneously. If one
fails the other will keep operating until the failed drive can be replaced.
To create a mirror you need a controller or an OS that supports a RAID 1
mirrored pair. Windows XP doesn't support this so with XP you need a
controller that does. A mirror is for fault tolerance and should not be used
for backup. There are many scenarios where both drives could be corrupted at
the same time. A mirror only protects against hardware failure of one drive.
It does not protect against data corruption, theft, fire, flood, user error,
etc.
 
Apparently, you don't know the difference between a mirrored hard drive and
a copied single partition of a hard drive.

Software mirrors can be troublesome, hardware-based mirrors are much better
choice. The simplest is RAID 1.

And, like Carey said, you have to install XP anew for that.
 
Jonny said:
Apparently, you don't know the difference between a mirrored hard
drive and a copied single partition of a hard drive.

Software mirrors can be troublesome, hardware-based mirrors are much
better choice. The simplest is RAID 1.
Click to expand...

Many hardware controllers allow you to build an array on the fly. It depends
on the controller if you need to re-install XP or not. The procedure would
be: backup system, install controller, install drivers for controller, move
hard drive to new controller and install second drive on new controller,
boot into the controller BIOS and setup RAID 1 array, boot into motherboard
BIOS and set system to boot from new controller, possibly boot into recovery
console and edit boot.ini file, possibly perform repair install of Windows,
or in the worst case scenario re-install Windows and restore your backup.
 
Thanks for all the info guys. Does anyone know of a raid controller for IDE
drives? Preferably one that will let me create the array on the fly? I
don't want to recreate the windows installation if possible. Thanks.
 
Phil said:
Thanks for all the info guys. Does anyone know of a raid controller
for IDE drives? Preferably one that will let me create the array on
the fly? I don't want to recreate the windows installation if
possible. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Promise has some low cost ones. I haven't used them. Whatever you do backup
before starting any installs or changes.

www.promise.com

If you don't mind me asking what are you trying to accomplish by using RAID
1? RAID 1 on a Windows XP system is rarely needed. It is normally only used
in servers to keep them limping until down time can be scheduled for a
repair.
 
Trying to make a long story short, I work at a manufacturing plant that has a
proprietary machine that was ordered from Germany. All of the software etc
is in German. What I want to do is create a fail safe for this as I probably
won't be able to rebuild the machine.
 
A couple of external drives and some disk imaging software would be a better
solution. Disk mirroring will only help if one drive has a hardware failure.
You need disaster ecovery that includes all scenarios. I recommend a cloned
drive kept off site, a disk image burned to CD or DVD kept off site, and at
least one external drive with a data backup or drive image updated regularly
on site. You could use USB drives, or install some removable caddy trays.
RAID 1 might be a good addition to this to keep the pc running but is not a
total solution.
 
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