How do I make 2 new hard Drives mirror each other?

It's called RAID and ideally I believe setting it up via BIOS is the best way for it. What motherboard do you have?
 
If you want to mirror them you have a number of choices:

1 - Using your motherboard's RAID controller to create a RAID 1 volume
2 - Convert both disks to dynamic disks then create a mirror set, look for the "Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions" option in control panel
3 - If you have Windows 8/8.1, you can create a storage pool and then a mirrored volume, look for "Storage Spaces" in control panel.

Option 1 is the most set and forget option, as the O/S won't even know it's two separate disks - but may cause problems should you wish to migrate the array to a new motherboard at some point. Option 3 is probably the simplest if you are not familiar with the process.

Edit: Should also add that mirroring should never be considered a true backup. Anything that happens to one disk - e.g. virus, accidental deletion - will happen on both disks. Mirroring is useful to avoid downtime if one disk fails though.
 
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If you want more control check out DrivePool. Storage spaces is very much a black hole with how your files are stored, and recovery after a disk crash could be painful. When using DrivePool on the other hand the files are readable on any PC (just open the hidden drivepool folder on the root of the disk and the folder/file structure within is untouched); also you get the ability to decide which files you want to duplicate and which you don't.

I believe storage spaces wipes out the whole partition whereas with DrivePool you can share a partition with both DrivePool and non-pooled (non-RAIDed) data :).
 
I can confirm Pho is correct, storage spaces can only work on a whole drive which limits flexibility a little.
 
Yes they are wd red, but I cant afford a synthology system at the minute.

Should I buy a raid pci card or just software raid it?

Can I use 6 hard drives with this drivepool. Slightly confused

robocopy looks even more confusing than drivepool... I will need to read up.
 
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Is it data only? (non operating system)

If so, I'd just use Robocopy and not bother with RAID..


robocopy /MIR "X:\source drive folder" "Y:\destination drive folder"

-Best to copy folders and not the WHOLE drive, there's a ton of hidden files that will error out if you tried to do the root of a drive.
 
This is bluray mkv and iso movies and my family camcorder footage. Just want to protect it all.

I have 2x wd red 6TB, 3x seagate 4TB drives.

Unsure what root to go With them all... Something I can setup and forget about.

:)!
 
nightrider1470 said:
Can I use 6 hard drives with this drivepool. Slightly confused

robocopy looks even more confusing than drivepool... I will need to read up.
Click to expand...

Their website is a bit rubbish which doesn't help.

You can use as many disks as you like, they can all be of different sizes too which is a major benefit over traditional RAID. You are just presented with one combined drive on your PC. E.g., disks of size 2TB+1TB+512GB+6TB = a drive of size 9.5TB being shown in my computer.

They have a trial version though which you can always have a play with. Unless you really want/need to make really "granular" decisions about how your files are stored you literally install the software, add your disks to the pool by clicking one button, and forget about it.

I had a play with storage spaces when I was evaluating the two and decided it looked too much of a faff to set-up :p.
 
Pho said:
Their website is a bit rubbish which doesn't help.

You can use as many disks as you like, they can all be of different sizes too which is a major benefit over traditional RAID. You are just presented with one combined drive on your PC. E.g., disks of size 2TB+1TB+512GB+6TB = a drive of size 9.5TB being shown in my computer.

They have a trial version though which you can always have a play with. Unless you really want/need to make really "granular" decisions about how your files are stored you literally install the software, add your disks to the pool by clicking one button, and forget about it.

I had a play with storage spaces when I was evaluating the two and decided it looked too much of a faff to set-up :p.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks mate I will give it a go. Can more drives be added later on?

When people say not to rely on this, it will only go wrong if more than one drives dies wont it? Which is extremely unlikely me thinks
 
nightrider1470 said:
When people say not to rely on this, it will only go wrong if more than one drives dies wont it? Which is extremely unlikely me thinks
Click to expand...

its not just a case of whether or not both drives fail on a mirror:

if you delete a file, it will be gone on both drives.
if a file corrupts, it will be corrupt on both drives.
if the controller throws a wobbler, the data could corrupt on both drives.

etc.
 
nightrider1470 said:
Ok thanks mate I will give it a go. Can more drives be added later on?

When people say not to rely on this, it will only go wrong if more than one drives dies wont it? Which is extremely unlikely me thinks
Click to expand...

Yep. You can easily remove a drive by ejecting it through the DrivePool UI too; if it needs to it will shuffle files off onto other disks so you don't break anything.

You can also buy their Scanner which is nice product too: it basically scans your HDs for bad sectors errors every once in a while and constantly monitors your SMART stats. If it detects any issues it can be set-up to email you a warning, and it can even speak to DrivePool to automatically evacuate your data by shifting it onto a good HD if it detects an impending meltdown.

Clearly this isn't a replacement for a backup; as others have said you still want an offsite backup if you want to protect your data from disasters/viruses etc.
 
neil_g said:
its not just a case of whether or not both drives fail on a mirror:

if you delete a file, it will be gone on both drives.
if a file corrupts, it will be corrupt on both drives.
if the controller throws a wobbler, the data could corrupt on both drives.

etc.
Click to expand...

This is why I reccomend Robocopy

Robocopy is a tool that just copies data..

as a test..


do this on your pc..



Create the folders..


C:\Test1
C:\Test2

now put a file in C:\Test1 (something that's say 300mb in size)



---

Now open a cmd window
(Start, run, cmd <hit enter>)

Type in..

robocopy /mir "C:\Test1" "C:\Test2"
<hit enter>


You'll see Robocopy start and it will copy all files from Test1 to Test2.


Any new files you add to Test1 will be copied the next time you've run that same command..


-got the basics of it now?


To create a 'bat' file, which is a simple file made in notepad that you can double click to run that command I've given you above


Open up Notepad, type in..

Code: 
robocopy /mir "C:\Test1" "C:\Test2"
pause

Save this with Notepad on your Desktop as something like "backup script.bat" -be sure to save it as .bat and not .bat.txt


Now if you double click this file, it will run the robocopy script and will pause at the end.



-It's really worth trying this out, it's easy to use and a fun tool to learn :)

Once you get the basics of using bat files, you can do a lot with them.
 
bledd. said:
This is why I reccomend Robocopy

Robocopy is a tool that just copies data..

as a test..


do this on your pc..



Create the folders..


C:\Test1
C:\Test2

now put a file in C:\Test1 (something that's say 300mb in size)



---

Now open a cmd window
(Start, run, cmd <hit enter>)

Type in..

robocopy /mir "C:\Test1" "C:\Test2"
<hit enter>


You'll see Robocopy start and it will copy all files from Test1 to Test2.


Any new files you add to Test1 will be copied the next time you've run that same command..


-got the basics of it now?


To create a 'bat' file, which is a simple file made in notepad that you can double click to run that command I've given you above


Open up Notepad, type in..

Code: 
robocopy /mir "C:\Test1" "C:\Test2"
pause

Save this with Notepad on your Desktop as something like "backup script.bat" -be sure to save it as .bat and not .bat.txt


Now if you double click this file, it will run the robocopy script and will pause at the end.



-It's really worth trying this out, it's easy to use and a fun tool to learn :)

Once you get the basics of using bat files, you can do a lot with them.
Click to expand...

Why not just copy and paste the file?, rather than all that hassle?
 
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