recommendation for mirroring software

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Marc

Hello: Would like to implement a complete mirror h/d for my Win XP SP2
machine so that all system software (eg Win update) and hardware driver u/d,
etc are automagically reflected into a secondary disk that is immediately
bootable, fully updated assuming a complete crash of the primary boot disk.
Am not a techie so ease of use would be an asset. Question: any
recommendations for EZ s/w that performs this?
Thanks much in advance.
 
Marc said:
Hello: Would like to implement a complete mirror h/d for my Win XP
SP2 machine so that all system software (eg Win update) and
hardware driver u/d, etc are automagically reflected into a
secondary disk that is immediately bootable, fully updated assuming
a complete crash of the primary boot disk. Am not a techie so ease
of use would be an asset. Question: any recommendations for EZ
s/w that performs this?
Click to expand...

I recommend against a mirror situation. The majority of problems that are
ran into are *not* hardware ones - but software. In the case of a mirror
RAID - you are just duplicating the problem as it occurs *unless* it is that
small chance it is a hardware failure.

Not only that - I would recommend avoiding any software solutions to RAID.
In most cases there is a performance hit (however small it might be) as the
software has to process and implement the replication/RAID functionality -
using up your processor time/memory/other resources to do so instead of an
inexpensive RAID hardware card doing the work for you.

Overall - I would recommend a good backup plan above (or supplementing) a
RAID setup.
 
Sounds like a job for a RAID array - two identical disk where one mirrors the
other (raid 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID). Windows XP Pro supports
that:

(from Help) dynamic disk
A physical disk that can be accessed only by Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks do not, such as support for
volumes that span multiple disks. Dynamic disks use a hidden database to
track information about dynamic volumes on the disk and other dynamic disks
in the computer. You convert basic disks to dynamic by using the Disk
Management snap-in or the DiskPart command line utility. When you convert a
basic disk to dynamic, all existing basic volumes become dynamic volumes.

Now there are many backup programs that do real-time backups, but that won't
give you a disk that's can take over right away in case of a disk crash.
 
Thanks much for the response. While I take your greater expertise and
experience without question, my own situation is that in that last two years,
I have fought no less than two h/d failures on two older laptops and now a
Dell desktop that was only 16 mos old -- at my two homes. I have had to
re-install due to a corrupt system in the long past, but not nearly so often
as h/d malfunction: h/d's are cheap, my time is not. My data b/u's and
reinstalls are easy, system s/w is not (for me). If I were to accept the risk
you cite, I would still appreciate s/w utility recommendations from you or
others that aim at keeping a fully updated/patched OS and system s/w in "hot"
standby.
 
Marc said:
Hello: Would like to implement a complete mirror h/d for my Win XP
SP2 machine so that all system software (eg Win update) and
hardware driver u/d, etc are automagically reflected into a
secondary disk that is immediately bootable, fully updated assuming
a complete crash of the primary boot disk. Am not a techie so ease
of use would be an asset. Question: any recommendations for EZ
s/w that performs this?
Click to expand...

Shenan said:
I recommend against a mirror situation. The majority of problems
that are ran into are *not* hardware ones - but software. In the
case of a mirror RAID - you are just duplicating the problem as it
occurs *unless* it is that small chance it is a hardware failure.

Not only that - I would recommend avoiding any software solutions
to RAID. In most cases there is a performance hit (however small it
might be) as the software has to process and implement the
replication/RAID functionality - using up your processor
time/memory/other resources to do so instead of an inexpensive RAID
hardware card doing the work for you.

Overall - I would recommend a good backup plan above (or
supplementing) a RAID setup.
Click to expand...
Thanks much for the response. While I take your greater expertise
and experience without question, my own situation is that in that
last two years, I have fought no less than two h/d failures on two
older laptops and now a Dell desktop that was only 16 mos old -- at
my two homes. I have had to re-install due to a corrupt system in
the long past, but not nearly so often as h/d malfunction: h/d's
are cheap, my time is not. My data b/u's and reinstalls are easy,
system s/w is not (for me). If I were to accept the risk you cite,
I would still appreciate s/w utility recommendations from you or
others that aim at keeping a fully updated/patched OS and system
s/w in "hot" standby.
Click to expand...

As I said - Hardware RAID.

Most laptops won't have two hard disk drives anyway.
For the desktop - an inexpensive add-on card to do hardware RAID for you
would be the best bet all around.

Software RAID is not something I recommend. Apologies. Its throwing too
many eggs in an unstable basket in my opinion. :-(
 
=?Utf-8?B?TWFyYw==?= added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...
Thanks much for the response. While I take your greater
expertise and experience without question, my own situation is
that in that last two years, I have fought no less than two
h/d failures on two older laptops and now a Dell desktop that
was only 16 mos old -- at my two homes. I have had to
re-install due to a corrupt system in the long past, but not
nearly so often as h/d malfunction: h/d's are cheap, my time
is not. My data b/u's and reinstalls are easy, system s/w is
not (for me). If I were to accept the risk you cite, I would
still appreciate s/w utility recommendations from you or
others that aim at keeping a fully updated/patched OS and
system s/w in "hot" standby.
Click to expand...

Do you mean "mirror" literally, as in be able to create multiple
new PC loads from a pre-determined build set, or do you mean
"image" meaning to copy the entire partition so that you can do a
faster restore in event of a HD failure or some other problem?
I've never done a mirror but prior to retiring, our IT staff
would create what they called "slams" which worked fine for the
basic load because all PCs of a given order were identical. For
imaging, I evanluated both Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image
and chose the latter. Thankfully so far I've not had to actually
recover my HD but I did test that at least TI 9.0 could find it
 
Hello: Would like to implement a complete mirror h/d for my Win XP SP2
machine so that all system software (eg Win update) and hardware driver u/d,
etc are automagically reflected into a secondary disk that is immediately
bootable, fully updated assuming a complete crash of the primary boot disk.
Am not a techie so ease of use would be an asset. Question: any
recommendations for EZ s/w that performs this?
Thanks much in advance.
Click to expand...

Don't do software mirroring - There are many inexpensive RAID controller
cards that do a more reliable, better, faster, job of implementing RAID.

Soft RAID is bad, it will bite you in the butt on a workstation.

--

Leythos
- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a
drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)
 
Thanks much for the response. While I take your greater expertise and
experience without question, my own situation is that in that last two years,
I have fought no less than two h/d failures on two older laptops and now a
Dell desktop that was only 16 mos old -- at my two homes. I have had to
re-install due to a corrupt system in the long past, but not nearly so often
as h/d malfunction: h/d's are cheap, my time is not. My data b/u's and
reinstalls are easy, system s/w is not (for me). If I were to accept the risk
you cite, I would still appreciate s/w utility recommendations from you or
others that aim at keeping a fully updated/patched OS and system s/w in "hot"
standby.
Click to expand...

If you are having HD fail that often you could have many other problems:

1) Do you use a quality UPS (Battery + Line Filtering)?

2) Do you keep your workstation clean of dust?

MIRRORING will not stop "corruption" and is NOT A BACKUP, but it will
help in a complete drive failure situation - hardware RAID is a lot
easier to recover than software RAID.

--

Leythos
- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a
drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)
 
Leythos said:
Soft RAID is bad, it will bite you in the butt on a workstation.
Click to expand...

Agree. You would be better investing in a disk-imaging product like Acronis
TrueImage or such, to make a disaster-recovery copy of the OS.

To make this easier to use, its often a good idea to keep your data on a
separate partition from the OS. Then if the OS fails to boot, you don't have
to nuke your data to repair it.

Your data -if on a separate partition- can be backed-up whilst the OS is
running, for example to a USB diskbox, with XCOPY. This makes for a quick and
easy daily procedure.

I don't have a lot of faith in RAID or mirroring. Some years back, on a
mirorred Netware server, one disk in the process of failing put bad data onto
the SCSI bus, and corrupted the other.

Meanwhile, RAID often _prevents_ you from taking disaster-recovery
precautions that would be available with a standard IDE or SATA disk. Which
is preferable- a degree of redundancy and a system which cannot be protected
against disaster... or one with no redundancy that can? I know which I would
choose.
 
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