Just a question for P5Q-E and Raid

[dragonstongue]

I am currently running a P5Q-e Motherboard and have one 320 GB WD aaaks drive

What I intend to do if at all possible is a few variations input and help would be greatly appreciated.

What I would really like to have is the drive I am currently using backup in best/fastest way at least weekly.

Prefered to have my current install OS on one partition of another drive, drivers on same disk although another partition. Next drive would be partitioned to have paging file one one part, games and all else on other part.

When complete would like to have all this data in full backed up to drive currently using in case have to format/rebuild

Anyway generally looking for speed/stability/safety/security for current data

I know option 1 would be raid 1 mirror for backing up but to do this properly have to format current drive correct?

option 2 would be get 2 new drives mirror them and use this one as backup and just manually transfer files over.

Anyway sorry for confusion and lots of thoughts but any help would be greatly appreciated thanks.

 

[Dangman]

First of all RAID != backup. RAID guarantees uptime but not backup. Data can still be corrupted, deleted, infected and lost with a RAID array. So RAID is NOT backup.

Oh and to setup a RAID array of any type, you'd have to format the drives

I recommend getting a eSATA external hard drive. That'll meet your "speed/stability/safety/security" needs. Do a manual or automated backup using some piece of softtware every week or so, leave the external hard drive unplugged and unconnected, and you should be golden.

Alternatively, if you have cash to spend, you could go with option 2 plus an external hard drive. That way you'll have your important data on three different hard drive. Short of a housefire, flood, tornado, robbery, the likelihood of losing all three sources of data is small.

However, if you have a lot of cash to spend, you can expand on the above backup plan by adding a NAS or file server to your network and storing your data there as well. That way you'll have your data duplicated across 4 mediums: your PC, a backup drive within the PC, an external hard drive and file server/NAS

 

[dragonstongue]

Well question is as such and will try to word proper if I can

What I am trying to do or eventually will do is place Windows 7 on primary partition and XP on another partition

When I do this would I format as NTFS for whole hard drive then partition?

2nd portion of the question is to backup my data I was going to buy a external HDD, what is best bet as far as speed and security is concerned? Am I wrong that your OS has to be present to use sata/usb if that is the case thought more costly best to go ethernet based?

3rd part is my current hard drive is one large volume XP SP3 I would keep this as 2nd drive for all my games and such if I had a fresh install of XP on another disk would I be able to use this current drive as a secondary without having problems moving things over to primary drive or using them directly from current drive including drivers etc?

Hope I worded this all correctly but basically OS on one partitioned HDD to help in case need format or OS disk dies etc, 2nd drive would be all drivers, games, etc partitioned to 1/4 if possible games/music etc/important/everything else then finally 3rd disk would be backup for main and secondary all parts

 

[Dangman]

1) Yes you have to format a drive first before you can partition it. In your case, yes you would have to format as NTFS and then partition.

2)
A) Speed wise, just about any external enclosure with eSATA would do the trick. Security wise, I'm not too sure what you mean. But taking a guess: As long as you keep the external hard drive unplugged and unhooked to your PC after the backups are done and store that external hard drive somewhere else, you should be good to go with the physical security as well as protection for the ext. hard drive against any viruii and malware infecting your PC.

B) I have no idea what you're asking here. Are you asking if you can backup/access your files from outside of your PC's OS and/or no OSes at all?

3) As long as you make sure that the motherboard is booting from the new hard drive and that the old drive is not installed in the PC while you're installing XP on that new drive, yes you can use that old hard drive as a secondary drive. However, any apps that were installed on that old drive AND require registry settings will probably require a fresh install of those apps on that new OS.

 

[dragonstongue]

1. So windows 7 will be NTFS as well, so safe to do format disk through command prompt as NTFS?

2.A.Well I had read somewhere that external drives based on e-sata or usb and raid(software driven) usually require os to work properly in my case drive expert(P5Q-E).

And another question I know E-SATA is generally the fastest, what about the NAS type setup i.e ethernet. based on ethernet does this get connected directly to comp or through router to comp

For safety wise that was what I was going to do but more concerned with if I lose mobo/main hard drive and have to rebuild/start fresh on primary I don`t want to have to sit there and spend hours reinstalling stuff or bringing to a comp shop for them to do it, I simply want a click one button kinda deal.?

B. In general was wondering for backup/mirror wise if worse comes to worse and had to rebuild primary drive i.e clean format no drivers or anything if I would be able to
A1 use the external drive regardless of its connection type to retrieve its files without OS being present(use external as a primary)
A2 use that external to replace the info that was on primary disk i.e rebuild its contents

C So I guess simple things like most games my documents favorites etc I can use from that secondary disk but things like drivers etc probably not?

 

[Dangman]

1) Yes Windows 7 will be NTFS so yes you can format the disk via command prompt as NTFS.
2)
a)
- Ok for a RAID setup, it depends on whether you set up the RAID array via the mobo's onboard RAID chip (hardware assisted Software RAID or fakeRAID) or an actual software RAID within the OS (Windows, Linux) In the first case, you don't need an OS to actually create the array. However in both cases, you need an OS of some sorts in order to access and use the RAID array.

For external hard drives, they don't have an OS. You need an OS of some sorts (Windows, Mac, Linux) to actually use and access external hard drives. However you don't need the original OS where you first used/formatted the external hard drive to access the hard drive. You can use the extnernal hard drive on anyone's and everyone's PC.
- If you're using ethernet/NAS, you need to connect it to a router, perferably the same one your PC is on. NAS needs a router or switch in order to serve up files. However there are a handful of NASes out there that have eSATA connections so they can double as an external hard drive just in case.
- Ahh thats what you meant. Ok you want to create an image of your PC/OS partition/hard drive then. An image is a bit for bit copy of your hard drive/partition/OS. When you first install the OS and setup the PC just the way you like, you can use an imaging tool like Acronis True Image to make an image or copy of the OS/hard drive/partition. Store that image on another hard drive and external hard drive. Now should you need to reinstall your primary drive/OS, all you have to do is use the Acronis True Image boot CD or whatever imaging software's CD, boot from it, point/direct it towards the image you created and there you go. Acronis will then restore your hard drive back to the way it was when you first installed the OS and setup the PC or whatever was the last time you created an image of your OS.

Acronis True Image has a 15 day trial so try it. Something to try: If you have a spare hard drive or two: Make an image of your current install and store that image on a third or external hard drive. Then remove your primary boot drive, boot from the Acronis True Image CD, and try to restore it onto that second drive:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

b)
a1) No. You need an OS (doesn't matter if it was yours or on someone else's PC) in order to access/use an external hard drive.
a2) Well if you kept an image of the primary drive on that backup drive, yes you can use the image that backup drive to restore your primary drive back to the way it was. AS long as that image was a very current backup/image.

C) Well if it's driver installation files, you can. As for the actual drivers (the stuff in the system 32 folder/ etc) themselves, it depends on whether or not those drivers are capable of being used in Windows 7/Windows Vista in the first place.

 

[dragonstongue]

Danny bui I thanks you so very much for the help don`t know if there is a + here but +1 million nods, great in-depth detail that I greatly appreciate.