Posted: 1/11/2009 1:31:42 PM EDT
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I had a HD crash and someone recommend getting two identical drives and running them in a RAID1 configuration to backup my data.
I like that idea. Can someone please explain the process to me in detail? Preferably using lot of short words. Running Win XP/Intel Core 2 Duo if that helps. Messing with hardware is easy. Screws, hammers, electricity and band-aids. But the 1's and 0's in software usually cause me headaches and I want to break things. |
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Some OSes/OS configurations will support software RAID, which means the OS takes care of treating the two drives as one. Or a hardware device (RAID controller) takes care of it. I only have experience with hardware RAID... and it's really not complicated. Connect two identical drives to the controller, and the controller reads and writes data from both drives but looks like a single drive to the OS, so everything is redundant. Really the only thing complex at all is if you are using the RAID array for your boot drive, you may have to load the RAID controller driver in during the installation process so that the installer can see the system.
Fast, easy and it's saved my system before. |
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get an external drive get one as big as you can afford and do regular backups .benefit is you can share data and movies ect ect
personal i have 150 MB OS drive a 300 gb internal a 300 gb removable HD ,a 150 gb laptop HD in an enclosure and a 1TB maxtor notebook don't depend on any one drive for backup |
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In hardware mode, RAID 1 (mirroring) is very easy and damn near idiot proof. Install the RAID card, connect the drives, boot the computer. As the computer boots, watch for the RAID card BIOS to appear, with a message saying "Press F3 for setup" or something similar.
Go into the setup, select RAID 1, select drives (procedure may vary slightly). At this point, if you want to install an OS like Windows on the drive, reboot with the Windows CD/DVD in the CD/DVD drive. The Windows setup routine will see the RAID array as one drive and will create and format the partition for you. If this array will be for data, reboot into Windows, add partition(s) and format. Again, Windows will see the array as one drive. –––– I have no experience with software RAID. I imagine it's a bit more complicated to set up. I would not recommend it for a variety of reasons. –––– I do know that software RAID will generally have poor performance (and, since it uses the CPU, will probably degrade system performance), while hardware RAID 1 will generally have increased performance on read operations (and does not rely on the CPU). Write operations will not be faster. |