Run 2 Hard drives together

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deon
  • Start date Start date
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Deon

Hi there,

WIN XP Prof

As I am not sure what the wording is for what I want to ask, I wil try
my best to explain.

I just had a hdd crash and lost almost all my data. I have read a little
bit and heard about running your PC from two HDD's that tun at the same
time. At the same time the one HDD is an exact image of the other and
that should one fails, your data sits safe on the other drive. All this
happens while the PC "sees" only one drive.

I am ready now to do this and want to buy my second HDD and proceed with
the installation and setup.

Is there anyone who can help me/put me on the right track with this
setup? I will really appreciate your help.

Regards,
Deon
 
Google for the term RAID and read all about disk mirroring (RAID 1).
Requires two drives (normally of exactly the same specification) and
hardware to accomplish properly.
 
Hi there,

WIN XP Prof

As I am not sure what the wording is for what I want to ask, I wil try
my best to explain.

I just had a hdd crash and lost almost all my data. I have read a little
bit and heard about running your PC from two HDD's that tun at the same
time. At the same time the one HDD is an exact image of the other and
that should one fails, your data sits safe on the other drive. All this
happens while the PC "sees" only one drive.

I am ready now to do this and want to buy my second HDD and proceed with
the installation and setup.

Is there anyone who can help me/put me on the right track with this
setup? I will really appreciate your help.
Click to expand...

You're looking at RAID 1. I don't know how to set it up in XP,
though.
 
Deon said:
Hi there,

WIN XP Prof

As I am not sure what the wording is for what I want to ask, I wil try
my best to explain.

I just had a hdd crash and lost almost all my data. I have read a little
bit and heard about running your PC from two HDD's that tun at the same
time. At the same time the one HDD is an exact image of the other and
that should one fails, your data sits safe on the other drive. All this
happens while the PC "sees" only one drive.

I am ready now to do this and want to buy my second HDD and proceed with
the installation and setup.

Is there anyone who can help me/put me on the right track with this
setup? I will really appreciate your help.
Click to expand...

The technology you are looking for is called RAID, which stands for
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. There are a number of
different ways (called levels) of implementing RAID.
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

What you have described is referred to as RAID Level 1 and also as
Disk Mirroring.

Newer computer hardware, especially motherboards that support the new
SATA hard drives, often have RAID capabilities built in. Check the
documentation for your motherboard to see if it has this.

If it doesn't then you can purchase a separate hard disk controller
card that supports RAID (Promise is one well-known brand) and connect
your drives to this.

Or you can use a software solution with disk mirroring software. A
Google search should identify a number of sources for this.

You should be aware that RAID 1/Disk Mirroring is an inefficient
operation, especially with a software implementation. Hard drive
performance will be reduced substantially, resulting in a probably
noticeable drop in overall computer performance.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
 
To add to the others,
If you mean by crash, winxp crashed, there are usually methods to recover
data, which will be more difficult if you only have a recovery cd which
performs a destructive recovery.
Using mirror raid is not a replacement for backing up data
 
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