mirror image hard drives

[S.Joisey]

If I understand past threads properly, I should create a mirror image of my hard drive on an external drive using a product such as Acronis. Then, if my hard drive fails, I can switch over to the mirror image, let Carbonite update it, and I am ready to go.

My question is - I have 2 computers. Can I make a mirror image of both computers on the same external hard drive?

[jstoddard]

Yes you could. If you had 4 250GB computers and a 1TB external drive - that drive could hold at least 4 drive images.

The thing is - if the drive motor in that external drive failed (which it eventually will) - you'd lose the drive image to 4 machines instead of just 1. With Terrabyte drives being under $100, I don't think i'd take that risk.

Different software handles it different ways. With Acronis - I don't think you even need to set up separate logical drives. Just name your drive image "Laptop10".... "Desktop02" etc. you just need to be able to ID the files when the time comes to restore them.

If you need to restore an entire image - most drive image software works by first booting to some lightwt. operating system - usually some version of Linux - from a "recovery disk" CD/DVD. That way all the operations can happen on the hard drive without needing an operating system installed there first. It executes some basic batch files and 'copy' type commands that let you search for the drive image you want to restore, and then it both preps the drive (formats a partition on the new hard drive) and copies/expands the data automatically. You wind up with an exact replica of what you had.

Sort of.

Pro" versions let you restore an image to a totally different drive geometry and other hardware than the machine that created it. That's what makes it useful if you need to go buy a totally different computer - say after a flood or fire. In those cases, none of the original Windows hardware settings are going to work, because the graphics card will be different, the drive is a different size, the network card won't be the same... yadda yadda. That used to be a total nightmare - if the new machine booted at all, you'd still be faced with hours of uninstalling the wrong hardware drivers and re-installing the right ones. That process took as long as just re-installing everything from scratch. Today - 90% of those hassles are eliminated... the software somehow handles it in the background and you're usually good to go (save for the usual windows updates etc)

Drive images aren't the only way to bulletproof your set-up, but they're a great way. Instead of losing a weekend every time your computer crashes - you lose a couple hours and most of it happens unattended, so you can do other things while it's happening.

Another way is to use what is known as "virtualization" - in that model all your computers get their desktop, their OS, and all their data "over the wire". If you have a lot of computers in your organization, and good internet connectivity everywhere - this can be the way to go. Same deal -if someone runs over their laptop with their pickup truck.. they can go down to Staples and buy any off-the-shelf computer. The second they get back online they'll have everything back exactly as it was.

This works very much like "GoToMyPC" or "GoToMEeting" etc. -the virtual machine is running on a server in a data center somewhere - and the "remote" client is just sending keystrokes and mouse movements back and forth - no actual data. This is sort of the idea behind Googles' "Chromebooks" - they don't have any on-board storage to speak of and rely on some kind of remote image.

Obviously - if everyone's "hard drive" is living on a server... if that server goes down -or there's a data center outage - you're really cooked - so you really have to follow best back-up and availability practices . You're not eliminating the problem - just centralizing it so it's easier to manage.

JLS

[rayh78]

I am far from an expert but this is the best way for me.
Main thing for me is less down time when I am busy.

What you said works fine and a Acronis 250 GB backup image uses a lot less space than 250 GB on the external drive. It’s compressed.
Works great if the HD just get corrupted or virus or something. But the drive is still good

But what if the PC hard drive fails you still have to go get a new HD and install it and get it working. Then restore the image to it.

Internal hard drives are cheap.
So I do what you do with the external drive. But then I have an extra internal drive installed in the case but is not connected.
I bought an exact duplicate hard drive that I already had my PC. Just a little easier with Acronis since restoring a 250 GB to another 250 GB and the partitions match.

Then once a year I unplug the cable from my original drive and plug in the duplicate. Let the PC boot up then restore a recent image from my external with acronis.
Then use that drive until next year.

So if ever a hard drive fails. It takes about 3 minutes to pull out my PC, open case and switch the cord to the other drive.
Then I am backup and running so I can use my PC right away.
Then as soon as time allows can do the Acronis restore to update everything. And my other backup.
I only do an Acronis complete system backup once a month. Then normal backups like my documents to the external also.

[rayh78]

Should have added.
If you do an image with Acronis. Its a backup and takes up much less space. But you have to have something to restore it to.

With Acronis you can also do a Clone. Which is an exact duplicate and not a backup that has to be restored.

Not sure if you could do a clone to the external then find a way for the PC to boot from that drive. If so the external would only be used for that one PC.

[jstoddard]

The short answer is the "pro" (more expensive) levels of Acronis allow you to create clone images that can be restored on different hardware than what created them. They change their product around all the time so I can't tell which product name you need to buy - it used to be the +/- $50 level and up had the capability ... the $10 version did not. Just read the specs on your imaging software carefully - it's not going to be as useful if it can only restore to the same computer that provided the image. THat scenario is OK for a failed drive motor, assuming you can still get exactly the same geometry drive - but it's useless in the case of a fire/flood/AOG that takes out the entire computer.

Replacing a failed physical drive is one option - but today it might be more cost effective to just buy a different computer initially- then maybe re-purpose the old CPU for something else later (of course I have an office full of old PCs that I was going to do stuff with -now all taking up space) You can get desktop CPUs for well under $500 and laptops well under $1000 you can't really afford to put much money into an older PC. If you have the skills to replace the drive yourself it's a minor cost... but if you have to pay the "IT Guy" to do it - then you're approaching the cost of a new machine, which would give you updated processor, video card, etc.

Just look at your potential cost/benefit, and make a plan. Put it in writing, and make that document part of your offsite backup. When disaster happens, follow that plan. The reason we put so much emphasis on the written plan - if the Sh!t really hits the fan (think "Katrina") you don't want to have to "think" - you want to "do". Having it all worked out ahead of time is absolutely the way to go.

I want to touch on something important though - your data backup frequency should be at whatever frequency you can afford to lose. If ou can afford to lose a full day's worth of computer work - then back-up daily. I don't want to lose 5 minutes' work, so that's why I use Dropbox and actually replaced the "my Docs" folder with "My Dropbox".

You should be using drive images in addition to a daily data backup. Best practice is that you don't have a true "backup" unless the data is "stored offsite in a secure location". Today, some manner of online backup usually satisfies that requirement... UNLESS you deal with massive amounts of data - say video or pro audio. Then that may not be the best method. But for most contractors - Carbonite, DropBox et al are all good options.

Read my column here on the site re: Save-n-Sync services. One of those is what we're recommending now. Pick one, any one. These services take the "Carbonite/Mozy" services to the next level. (Yes, I realize there is all kinds of cross-over and gray areas now).

We term drive images as a "rapid recovery" method. It's a convenience 'backup' that lets you get back to work very quickly, compared to shuffling DVDs. It's a great tool, but because the current drive images are probably not going to be kept anywhere offsite- don't confuse it with a true backup/disaster recovery protocol.

JLS

[S.Joisey]

I appreciate all the info. I'm trying to digest it all.

From what you are saying, a mirror image is not a clone? What is the difference?

I'm currently working with Windows XP. If my HD goes, I'll simply get a new computer in Windows 7 or whatever is the latest OS at the time.

So what type of backup do I create so I have the smoothest transition?

[jstoddard]

The differences are largely imposed by the software vendors - they're fundamentally all "drive images". Acronis for example has to add "other stuff" to a plain drive image in order to have it restore on different hardware than created it... I believe they now call that "re-install anywhere" image a "clone". A "Mirror" is something else (see my PS below)

Strictly speaking - a pure, unaltered drive image will only re-install on the same hardware that made it, because the hard drive geometry (size, number of sectors, etc) has to be identical -- the installed Windows drivers are only good for specific hardware,etc etc. Since that's not always the situation, the imaging software producers have come up with ways to make a drive image more universal.

If you are currently using Windows XP, what I would do is subscribe to a DropBox account that is large enough to cover your entire "My Documents" folder plus the smattering of data files that aren't kept in My Documents - for example an Outlook .PST file (if you use Outlook). I would literally replace "My Documents" with the "My Dropbox" folder that Dropbox creates. You will then be able to access every file you create from any computer, smartPhone, or Tablet you happen to want to use.

Moving from XP to Win7 or Win8 is going to require re-installation of any applications anyway, so I wouldn't worry about trying to salvage your current drive image. Just make sure all your data is backed up.

Hope that helps.
JLS

PS - the term "Mirror" usually means something else altogether - A "drive image" is a compressed archive volume meant for backup/recovery. A "Mirror" is a real-time copy - it refers to what you get when you use RAID level 1 to duplicate a hard drive in-place. One computer - two hard drives - with exactly the same data on both. A "Drive Mirror" is a form of fault tolerance - if one of the drives were to fail suddenly, the RAID (Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Drives) kicks in and can read/write to the other one. Mirrors don't help you in the backup dep computer. Drive mirroring is sometimes used to improve drive READ times since a good hardware RAID controller can read from both drives simultaneously. (RAID 1 can slow down WRITE times since both drives are written to simultaneously)

Back in "the day" we'd set up the Operating System drives in a network server with RAID 1 - that would speed up the OS a little since it's a READ-intensive activity.... then we'd use RAID 5 (allows hot-swapping of a new drive if one fails) for the data drives. For more on RAID read this Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

PS - I'm going to do a new column on this topic -there seems to still be a lot of confusion so time to update the recommendations.

[jstoddard]

PS - Concerning RAID.
RAID is used for fault tolerance on servers. It's still best practice to incorporate fault tolerance in your network/web servers, since downtime is unacceptable. Redundant hard drives, network cards and power supplies,correctly configured, can keep a server up and running until a tech. can get to it (in your office or in a data center)

Today, with really huge and fast (and cheap) hard drives and super-fast CPUs, RAID is very seldom much of an advantage on a desktop computer - with a few exceptions. Those possible exceptions are things like engineering workstations, graphics workstations, and DAW machines (Digital Audio Workstations). In other words - computers that are managing a ton of CPU activity and gigantic files in the background where anything you can do to speed up hard drive read/write times is beneficial.

JLS

[Aaron Rosenthal]

I came late to this discussion.
I have a Synology server with 2 x 1 TB drives, on which I back up my desktop machine and my 2 MacBook Pro s.
Once every year, or 18 months, I replace one of the drives.
My business files get put on to a 4 GB thumb drive every 2 weeks or so.