Mirroring a drive as a backup

JIM_BOB7813

JIM_BOB7813

JIM_BOB7813

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4 May 2004
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Currently I backup by copying my most useful data to DVDs (mydocs/desktop etc) but it occured to me that if my HDD does fail I will still have to go through the work of installing Windows, all other programs, customising them, setting email client etc so I thought it would be worth investing in another HDD and mirroring my current one to that so I could just swap them over in the event of HDD failure.

Which is the best way to do this? Buy another oem drive (320gb 7200.10) and use something like True Image? Does WinXP Pro have HDD cloning software? Could I use Linux (dd?)?

Thanks
 
WinXP Pro has no inbuilt cloning software, although has the plumbing for supporting such (VSS - Volume Shadowcopy Service). Acronis TrueImage is a good call, have had many good experiences with it. A simpler option you might want to investigate (not sure if this will suffice, just mentioning it as it ocurred to me) is to use "HoboCopy".

Yes, you could also use Linux (dd & friends) but that would require you to boot into Linux of course. If you already dual boot anyway, then that could work really well.
 
JIM_BOB7813 said:
Currently I backup by copying my most useful data to DVDs (mydocs/desktop etc) but it occured to me that if my HDD does fail I will still have to go through the work of installing Windows, all other programs, customising them, setting email client etc so I thought it would be worth investing in another HDD and mirroring my current one to that so I could just swap them over in the event of HDD failure.

Which is the best way to do this? Buy another oem drive (320gb 7200.10) and use something like True Image? Does WinXP Pro have HDD cloning software? Could I use Linux (dd?)?

Thanks
Click to expand...
I clone my partitions onto hidden partitions on a second hard drive that is installed in my case using Ranish Partition Manager

If my primary drive fails I can just boot from the second drive and everything is there.
 
Thanks for the replies. Would mirroring the drive make Windows unhappy as the new drive would have a different serial number and SID(?)

I think you can use dd from a live CD, but it's a bit dauiting as ive never used it before and would like to try/practice it before using it on my precious hard drive!
 
JIM_BOB7813 said:
Thanks for the replies. Would mirroring the drive make Windows unhappy as the new drive would have a different serial number and SID(?)
Click to expand...
If you mirror the entire drive then the MBR containing the disk id will be cloned too. Windows will be none the wiser.

If the disk id does change then this shouldn't cause a problem. Windows derives the partition signature from the disk id and the starting partition sector every time it boots. When you boot from the new disk a new partition signature will be calculated from the new disk id and assigned the letter C:

The problem comes if the Windows partition on the original disk is still visible when you boot from the clone. The partition signature stored in the registry will match the partition on the original disk and become C: The new clone partition will be assigned D:

EDIT: I'm assuming that you'd only boot from the second disk if the original failed and couldn't be accessed.
 
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If you are going to the agro of imaging the drive to another periodically (you accept you'll loose anything not backed up between images) and your only concern is drive failure (eg you aren't bothered about fire/theft/sabotage) then RAID1 could be worth looking at. It will give you a live image and allow you to boot irrespective of single drive failure.
 
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