Re: recommendation for mirroring software

Marc wrote:
Hello: Would like to implement a complete mirror h/d for my Win XP
SP2 machine so that all system software (eg Win update) and
hardware driver u/d, etc are automagically reflected into a
secondary disk that is immediately bootable, fully updated assuming
a complete crash of the primary boot disk. Am not a techie so ease
of use would be an asset. Question: any recommendations for EZ
s/w that performs this?

Shenan Stanley wrote:
I recommend against a mirror situation. The majority of problems
that are ran into are *not* hardware ones - but software. In the
case of a mirror RAID - you are just duplicating the problem as it
occurs *unless* it is that small chance it is a hardware failure.

Not only that - I would recommend avoiding any software solutions
to RAID. In most cases there is a performance hit (however small it
might be) as the software has to process and implement the
replication/RAID functionality - using up your processor
time/memory/other resources to do so instead of an inexpensive RAID
hardware card doing the work for you.

Overall - I would recommend a good backup plan above (or
supplementing) a RAID setup.

Marc wrote:
Thanks much for the response. While I take your greater expertise
and experience without question, my own situation is that in that
last two years, I have fought no less than two h/d failures on two
older laptops and now a Dell desktop that was only 16 mos old -- at
my two homes. I have had to re-install due to a corrupt system in
the long past, but not nearly so often as h/d malfunction: h/d's
are cheap, my time is not. My data b/u's and reinstalls are easy,
system s/w is not (for me). If I were to accept the risk you cite,
I would still appreciate s/w utility recommendations from you or
others that aim at keeping a fully updated/patched OS and system
s/w in "hot" standby.

As I said - Hardware RAID.

Most laptops won't have two hard disk drives anyway.
For the desktop - an inexpensive add-on card to do hardware RAID for you
would be the best bet all around.

Software RAID is not something I recommend. Apologies. Its throwing too
many eggs in an unstable basket in my opinion. :-(

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


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