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Author Topic: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.  (Read 1818 times)

NigelC

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Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« on: September 21, 2011, 07:11:50 am »

Had an unpleasant thought walking the dog this morning!

I have a 2 1/2year old Vista 64 machine with Intel Q6600, overclocked to 3.00Ghz, 8GB RAM and 2 x 640GB HDDs in a RAID 0 array. (You can see this as an attempt by someone with a dangerously small knowledge of computers to achieve maximum speed with minimum cost - I wouldn't go down that route today).

I back up with Acronis True Image. (Also copy all image files to DVD). However, it occurred to me that in the (not unlikely) event of a HDD failure, I might choose to replace the whole set-up rather than replicate the RAID array with new hard drives. In which case the back-up is useless as it would only restore to the existing machine, with replacement hard drives, in the same configuration. This is correct, yes?

As a supplementary thought, I bought a fairly high spec Thinkpad W520 (i7, Win 7 64, 8GB, better graphics card than desktop) recently on the basis I would be doing a lot of PS/Lightroom work away from home - false assumption as it turned out and an unnecesssary duplication. Given I don't have massively large files to work with (5D2), if RAID machine falls over, I thought rather than replace it I would just use this laptop with the external monitor and get a big external hard drive for storage. I suspect this would be at least as fast because of the more up to date processor and OS.



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dl1234

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Re: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2011, 09:26:22 am »

Acronis can restore to a different drive architecture
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John.Murray

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Re: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2011, 12:15:15 pm »

Although Acronis is fine, the built in Vista Backup utility supports "bare metal" restores - this means you don't have to re-install the O/S before performing a restore (some versions of Acronis are also capable of this).

As long as your RAID configuration is defined in BIOS/Firmware, or if you use the built in RAID capabilities in Windows (not recommended), you'll be able to restore to any drive configuration.
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NigelC

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Re: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« Reply #3 on: September 21, 2011, 01:02:14 pm »

Thanks
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tived

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Re: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2011, 11:20:13 pm »

there are also services available that can help you recover if your RAID-0 fails and in most cases can recover most if not all.

Run RAID-0 but try to keep a regular back-up

Henrik
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Janne Aavasalo

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Re: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2011, 08:37:20 am »

I'd say the biggest issue with your setup is that you have the OS and your photos etc on the same physical disk(s). This is if I understood your situation right.

I have used Raid-0 and in fact my workstation has two SSD-drives in Raid-0 array, but the thing is I never keep anything important on my OS-drive or array, so I don't care if it goes. Installing Windows if a hard-drive fails isn't a big issue for me and if for some reason I need to re-install to a working array I do have images only for the OS.

Also backing up your data and everything else on your computer including the OS with an imaging software is not exactly the best solution.

On a side note you can still get a decent computer out of the old one. Buy a SSD-drive, install your OS and applications on that, 8Gb is probably the best you can do on an older motherboard (although 16Gb could be possible) and get a few 1-2Tb disks and make a Raid-1 array with them using the Intel sata controller. It's not ideal, but I'd stay away from Windows software raid since that's bound to fail at some point.

And most important step of them all, throw away Vista and go with Windows 7 :)

Edit: I see you already asked a question about swapping Vista for 7, so above is my answer to that thread also.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2011, 08:39:45 am by JanneAavasalo »
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feppe

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Re: Concerns about restoring from backup on a RAID 0 system.
« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2011, 12:22:39 pm »

there are also services available that can help you recover if your RAID-0 fails and in most cases can recover most if not all.

Have you looked at the cost of such services? Duplicate backups, at least one of them offline, and at least one (other) one offsite (to recover from theft or fire/water damage) is a much cheaper alternative, and gives a much higher chance of full recovery.
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