RAID 1 or Norton Ghost ????

[Zog]

SEE HERE: RAID 1 or 0

All I want is to backup my system , mirror/ghost my main SATA hard drive.
Should I set up RAID 1 or use NOrton Ghost to copy my main hard drive?
I bought a copy of ghost last month and just used it copy (Ghost) my main hard drive.
Now this mirrored drive is a month old. Wouldn't it be almost as effective as RAID 1 to use ghost and set it up to automatically update the mirrored image? I don't really need instantaneous backup like RAID 1. What are the pros and cons of each?
How often should I run Ghost?
Which way will put less wear and tear on the system?


(XP Pro. P4 2.53, 1G RAM, 2 HD 80+120, ASUS P4P800, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake 480w PSU)

 

[MrChad]

For a backup system, you'll want to use Ghost, not RAID 1. RAID 1 is intended for quick recovery from hard drive failure, but it is not a good backup solution. If a virus or worm infects your hard drive and corrupts your data, the data on your mirrored drive will be corrupted as well under RAID 1. Ghost would be a much safer backup solution in this case.

 

[caledai]

Ghost creates an image (Backup) of your harddrive at any particular time whereas raid is current data. (Redudancy incase of HD Failure. It is not a backup, as any change to one drive is immediatly mirrored on the other.) Also, another option would be to partition and do to images, one for the system, and the other for data. As long as you don't change the system since the last image, you can overwrite the system partition with the system image and maintain your current data. Note, this involves setting Outlook and Databases to store there files on the second partition. Possibly even the entire Documents and Settings folder.

Where ghost really comes into its own is when managing multiple computers, now with sysprep, they don't even have to have the same hardware, you just use the same image.