The Backup Plan

What is your backup plan?

  • RAID

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Ghost (or other imaging system)

    Votes: 1 20.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 3 60.0%

  • I don't believe in backups.

    Votes: 1 20.0%
  • Total voters
    5
studiogenocide

studiogenocide

New member
I have been using Ghost for a long time. It recently saved me hours of reinstalling all my precious apps, and did on a couple of occasions in the past as well. Well, I am building a new system using XP Pro, and am debating on RAID 0, RAID 5, or simply going the ghost route again since it did so well for me last time. I am a techie sort of fellow, and have never built a RAID system, so I want to do it so I can say I did. I'm interested in what you all do for backups.

All my active tracks are stored on a diff HDD and I make regular backups of them on yet a separate HDD of the same capacity- all the while ghosting my OS and precious programs- (Yes, they are very precious, as I buy them all :)

Look forward to hearing what you guys do!
 
My computer has a second hard drive in it. I use a free backup app thats scheduled to do a mirror backup every night. I don't use RAID because I've heard that a raid disc is not formatted the same and could be more difficult to plug into a different computer to get data from. Something to do with the raid controller. I don't know much more and that might be incorrect, but I never pursued it because of that possibility. FBackup is good and free for Win7. I like EzBackitup or syncback for XP. In addition to the internal second hard drive, I have an external drive that I backup to ever month or 3 just in case the house burns down.
 
Thanks for the feed Jeff- actually, I think on a RAID 0 (mirror) you can pull one of the drives and transfer to another computer to pull data only (the other computer will not boot from that drive). I'm not saying I recommend it mind you... External is the best way to go when your bouncing files from station to station. Of course, yousendit.com is a great FTP route assuming both parties have high speed. I enjoy my 5 megs here at home!

I have like 7 drives not counting my externals. I have two of those, a 500 and 250. I have too much storage (is there a such thing?)

Look forwad to hearing more!
 
Hardware RAID 1 (mirroring) won't require your using another computer to get your data back if one HD crashes. The drives are redundant copies meaning you can plow through a failure. RAID 0 is striping, which is a performance boost, is not redundant and therefore will not survive a HD crash. Software mirroring is not always as easy. Sometimes the primary HD has to be the one functioning to keep working. Hardware RAID also generally performs better.

A 'cloned' drive may or may not be bootable depending on the method.

RAID should not be used as a substitute for backups. Backups save points in time, and multiple ones at that if you have enough storage space. Deleted files not are saved in a RAID array, whereas they are in a backup.

Redundant RAID arrays allow you to continue functioning despite a HD crash. Striped RAID arrays boost performance. RAID 0+1 and 1+0 allow different degrees of functionality after failures.
 
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Oh, Vomit- I hope it never happens. But here's a true stat- your HDD has a 100% chance of failure.
Whale- thanks for the clarify on the RAID levels. I think I am going to stick to ghosting and regular backups on separate HDDs.
 
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