[jtomara37]

I'm first looking for some basic information to my research of setting up a Raid.

1st suffice to say with 5 kids i was sick of re-buying dvds getting scratched and downloaded them all onto a large hard drive inside my pc. My wife also uses this same computer for HiDef video editing and website stuff.

I want to set up this raid mainly to save data if one drive fails i'll have the exact replica on the other drive (including the OS and all our programs-so sick of reinstalling and loosing data)

currently I have 2 500gb drives (not raided/mirrored etc. I want to purchase two 1TB or 1.5TB drives and mirror them.

Is it true that large drives are not good for setting up raid/mirror?

I also heard that large drives are not good for having it as your boot/OS... Is there any truth to this?

 

[jtomara37]

I'm not so worried about data getting corrupted via virus, spyware etc...... My main issue that continues to happen is HDD dying on me. We push it to the limit constantly using it almost 24hrs a day. The computer is rarely ever turned off and almost always having something written to it (even while sleeping)..... Our storage data(partition) is constantly being used as well. We are not the average PC users. Always trying new software or games. geting new movies, HiDef movie editing (wife-work & home movies-5kids), website (wife) We just can't afford to anymore loose data from a dying or dead drive and I just don't have the time nemore to waste 2-4 days of my life reinstalling all this crap and trying to get all settings, programs, updates back to where they were.

I like the idea of a automatic clone of a HDD.... that way if my main hdd dies I can take it out and put in the cloned one with little to no downtime... even if it was manual i wouldnt mind just pressing a button "clone drive" once every few days b4 bed or something. That would be better than a 2 drives running constantly in a raid mirror setup... I think I'm getting an idea of what I want.. now i just need to findo out if it exsists or possible.....

1. Is it possible to automatically clone (image-of boot/os & all data-exact replica) and set it to a specific time/date
2. When its time for the 2nd clone update it can just chk for changes in the image and just update those specific files so it would not have to clone the whole TB worth of information?
3. Clones be done while the OS is still on pc running etc?

Keep in mind I will have on hand a seperate clone image of just the OS and all programs installed (basic with all settings etc) just incase of emergency data corruption... (this one I'll just have stored away in a safe place.

 

[raptor_pa]

You can't clone select files, a clone is a bit stream image, in other words it doesn't copy files, it copies individual sectors, with no care about whetehr a sector is a file, if it is used etc. What you describe is a differential backup, create a full volume backup, then successive backups are just files that have changed since the last full backup. However, you can't just plug and go with the backup, it would need to be restored. Raid 1 is the best recovery option, no manual intervention, it will automatically use the other drive if one or the other fails. Then just replace that drive and rebuild the array. Downside is if you accidentally delete a file, it is gone from both volumes in the mirror at the same time, or if you do get a virus/malware infection, both drives are infected. Hopefully this answered your questions.