SSD for OS + 2TB Raid 1 with 1TB USB backup feedback

[orionshadow]

Hey guys,

I just finished ordering all the parts for my new system and for the first time I'm going to be going with a RAID setup.

After reading a bunch of forum posts I would just like to get a little feedback on my plan.

Parts:

Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate?

Crucial M4 128 SSD

2 x 2TB SAMSUNG EcoGreen F4 HD204UI HDD's

Western Digital MyBook 1TB USB Hard Drive (Already have from previous system)

on an ASRock Z68 EXTREME4 GEN3 motherboard
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The SSD will be used for the OS and a few games/applications.

So.... SSD + 2TB RAID1 for storage/other programs and use the 1TB external as a Backup for everything.

How could I backup my 128 SSD incase that fails? Would this work? Is this overkill? Just looking for a little input as the best solution for what Im trying to do (not lose data :0 )

Thanks

 

[zCypher]

Win7 has a backup program, or you could try Acronis which seems to have a good reputation. You're planning on using your 1TB as backup for everything, but you have 128GB SSD + 2TB of other storage? Maybe replace that 1TB with a 3TB WD Elements external?

Definitely not overkill to want to backup your boot drive.

 

[orionshadow]

Win7 has a backup program, or you could try Acronis which seems to have a good reputation. You're planning on using your 1TB as backup for everything, but you have 128GB SSD + 2TB of other storage? Maybe replace that 1TB with a 3TB WD Elements external?

Definitely not overkill to want to backup your boot drive.

So how would it work?

Partition the External with a 2GB and a 1GB for the OS drive? Say my OS drive fails, how would I use the external as a temporary replacement?

Thanks for the help

 

[zCypher]

So how would it work?

Partition the External with a 2GB and a 1GB for the OS drive? Say my OS drive fails, how would I use the external as a temporary replacement?

Thanks for the help

Oh, maybe I misunderstood. The external drive would just be for backups that you could recopy to the internal drives once they are replaced in the event of failure. You wouldn't actually run your computer off the external drive. The external should not need any partitioning, as far as I know it's basically just plug and play.

My thinking was that every once in a while you'd create an image of your SSD and store that image on your external drive. If your SSD fails, you'll need to replace it. Once replaced, you can copy the image back from the external drive so that you don't need reinstall OS and apps all over again.

What you're asking is what to use as a temporary replacement in case your SSD fails?

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

Orion, you could just save an image of your OS drive onto another HDD like the external so if something goes wrong on the OS drive you can replace the drive for a hardware problem or format and use the image to install the OS drive again. Since the SSD is small you could probably keep a few copies of images of the drive on the HDD.

Acronis can be used to create images of drives. My personal experience with Acronis (2009-2010) backup process was absolutely terrible. Their format for backups kept the actual files in a disarray because it split it into a ton of chunks. I would rather use Windows 7 backup process because it makes a copy of the directories you want without trying to change the organization of anything. Acronis drive imaging did work pretty good though. Maybe others can chime in with their experience of different backup software.

*EDIT* zCypher had the same thought i did

 

[orionshadow]

That makes much more sense .

How large would an image of a 128GB drive be? Same size? Dont know if there is some compression. Trying to figure how to use my existing drives in this configuration because I just dropped $1200 on this new setup.

I have an extra 160GB HDD laying around. Could I just put the image of my SSD on that? And use the external for the Storage backup?

 

[orionshadow]

bump help, parts come in today.

So setup the OS on the SSD under AHCI mode. Once I have Win7 setup then I add the 2 HDDs on SATA2 and do a software raid via Win7?

 

[CptKangaroo]

Any luck with this? So you load the OS onto the SSD in AHCI mode and get everything running, then for the raid array as storage, change bios to RAID, boot to windows disk and then what? It seems to prompt me to put the OS on the raid array too, which I dont want.

 

[zCypher]

You want to install the OS on the RAID array, you just want to keep an image of that install elsewhere as backup.

What parts did you end up ordering?