I think I want something that does not exist..

Ramses

Platinum Member
Apr 26, 2000
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I've been toying with the idea of RAID, it's been 10 years or more since I have done such.
I'm looking for data security rather than speed this time.

I eventually talked myself out of it since a mirror set isn't a replacement for regular backups, which is what I want. I am no good with backups, I have a ton of movies, music, photos, etc I don't want to use. I access and add/change them regularly, I do so from both Linux and Windows 7 daily.

I vaguely remember Windows maybe even as far back as NT4 being able to mirror drives in software, no array, no voodoo, just write the same data to each drive, such that either of said drives could be plugged in another computer and read if something unfortunate happens.

I'm almost sure Win7 can do this, and/or Linux.

But, I dual boot, every day work/play. I want the theoretical mirror, most likely of a pair of 2tb drives, to be mirrored and accessible from both OS's or it becomes a PITA.

Which leads me to an external controller, which leads me to not wanting an array that isn't such that I can take one of the drives and use it wherever.

Am I correct in assuming that the dual boot aspect of this is the problem?
I'm also assuming any of this makes sense.

Thoughts? Other than learn to backup like an adult? :)
 

Smoblikat

Diamond Member
Nov 19, 2011
5,184
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I've been toying with the idea of RAID, it's been 10 years or more since I have done such.
I'm looking for data security rather than speed this time.

I eventually talked myself out of it since a mirror set isn't a replacement for regular backups, which is what I want. I am no good with backups, I have a ton of movies, music, photos, etc I don't want to use. I access and add/change them regularly, I do so from both Linux and Windows 7 daily.

I vaguely remember Windows maybe even as far back as NT4 being able to mirror drives in software, no array, no voodoo, just write the same data to each drive, such that either of said drives could be plugged in another computer and read if something unfortunate happens.

I'm almost sure Win7 can do this, and/or Linux.

But, I dual boot, every day work/play. I want the theoretical mirror, most likely of a pair of 2tb drives, to be mirrored and accessible from both OS's or it becomes a PITA.

Which leads me to an external controller, which leads me to not wanting an array that isn't such that I can take one of the drives and use it wherever.

Am I correct in assuming that the dual boot aspect of this is the problem?
I'm also assuming any of this makes sense.

Thoughts? Other than learn to backup like an adult? :)

I believe linux has NTFS support (or at least the live CD's that I use do), so theoretically all you need to do is find a software RAID program that is usable in both linux and windows. Ill look for a few....

EDIT -
http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man8/dmraid.8.php
Its called DMRAID, I found the information on this page:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/2953...hat-can-be-shared-with-a-windows-installation
 
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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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RAID1 should be supported by any ICH#R

which then should be passed though to bios... what motherboard do you own?
 

Ramses

Platinum Member
Apr 26, 2000
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Sabertooth 990FX r2, if it was Intel I might be more inclined to trust onboard raid.
Have used it in years past with good results.

Smoblikat, that's interesting and I had not come across it searching but suspected such existed. It still does not give me the ability to pull one of my two mirrored drives out, which will be for data storage, and put it in an external enclosure if need be for example and use it elsewhere. At least I don't think it does.

I know I'm being particular but I figured it was worth asking, I appreciate you folks input. I'm starting to think I may need to just find or buy some good backup software for both Linux and Windows and try to adjust my use schedule to give it time to work.

If I was going to do actual RAID, I think I would buy a pair (to have a spare) of cheap common RAID cards like a Dell SAS6 that are readily available. I could at least swap the whole works over to another computer if something unfortunate happened, but that still does not give me the option to take a surviving single drive and transplant it without some voodoo going on.
 

Ramses

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Apr 26, 2000
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So I finalized my hardware at least today, I'm not ready to jump to SSD yet so it's a most recent gen 1TB Raptor I intend to split 50/50 for Linux/Windows as a boot and OS drive, a 2TB WD Black that I suppose I will partition as /user for Linux and one for Windows User and Programs(though I wish they could stay a single partition for simplicity), and two more 2TB WD Black drives that I will somehow utilize as bulk storage and backup for the first 2TB, and I'll stick an image of the boot drive on DVD I suppose once all is set up and working. And an old reliable Hitachi 1TB in there just cause it's laying around doing nothing and seems to be going to live forever.

I've been looking at backup software this evening. I think I'll end up having a backup run for the 2TB user/programs partition in both Linux and Windows saved to one of the designated backup 2TB drives, and another backup on a differing schedule to back up THAT backup to the OTHER 2TB drive.

It sounds messier than I think it will be once it's set up, and I'll have my pics/music/movies on two drives, and my working data on three. More or less.

RAID would be nice but I don't see it gaining me anything. If my User/Programs drive dies I can replace and restore pretty easily, if the OS drive dies I can re-image and at worst have to set some things up and reinstall some programs, if one of the backup drives fails I have the other with what should be identical data. I don't need 100% uptime really. Just not to loose my goings on.

This was easier when hard drives were small. In semi-retrospect I might should have looked into a RAID NAS of some sort. Maybe next time.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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if its a 990fx board then dont u have a marvell raid controller?

why not just hardware raid?

If the board should ever die, u just need to get a simular board with the same raid controller and i still believe u can migrate your raid to another board.

EDIT:

oh i see what u want.. incase of drive failure u want to be able to just remove the drive and plug it into another system... or boot from the drive to begin with.

Yeah.. i think im lost in your solution as well... cuz once a drive has been logically set as raid, only the raid controller can access it.
 

Concillian

Diamond Member
May 26, 2004
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You can image a drive in linux with the dd command. It does a per sector duplicate and EVERYTHING gets duplicated (MBR, RAID stripes, etc...)

This indescriminate nature is a blessing and a curse. Since it duplicates everything there are two issues:
- It takes FOREVER because it doesn't care if an area is blank or filled.
- If copies the mount identifier, so the OS can get confused as to which drive you want to mount, thus it can only be done properly on unmounted drives.

For single disc backup this works alright, you can duplicate all info and then change the disc mount identifier so they are independent drives again. Then use software to perform periodic incremental backups in each OS independently. This allows you to duplicate the boot information you'd need to preserve on a backup. To properly boot, you need to point the duplicated drive to the new mount ID you just gave it, but then you can pretty much swap between drives. This is how I backup on my linux computer. It spins up the second drive and runs incremental backups nightly, but I'm only keeping 700 or so gigs on there, it's not an array.

For RAID, dunno quite how that would work. but it seems like you could run duplicate identical arrays in the same way that you'd run a single drive duplicate. Just would require a little more time to initially setup.
 
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