Any thoughts on the following Windows drive cloning suggestion?
1) put an identical drive into your PC and set up (software) RAID-1
2) break the mirror
3) remove the original drive and boot from the newly-cloned drive
I feel that there may well be flaws...
Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
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- PlatinumLounger
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Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
John Gray
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Re: Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
In theory that should work - that's what it's meant to do, isn't it? It's certainly my first line of recovery, should the need arise!
I had a server (some years back) that had Raid 1. The first drive started disintegrating. I removed it, re-configured Drive 1 to be Drive 0, and it (re-)started normally (apart from an initial complaint that a drive was missing).
I don't think you should expect normal HD performance, particularly with software Raid 1, and especially on first starting up as everything is copied from Drive 0 to Drive 1....
I had a server (some years back) that had Raid 1. The first drive started disintegrating. I removed it, re-configured Drive 1 to be Drive 0, and it (re-)started normally (apart from an initial complaint that a drive was missing).
I don't think you should expect normal HD performance, particularly with software Raid 1, and especially on first starting up as everything is copied from Drive 0 to Drive 1....
Leif
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- PlatinumLounger
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Re: Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
Thanks, that's what I thought, but I've never had to do it in anger since if any file gets corrupted on a (bad) first disk, this gets copied across to the (good) second disk, doesn't it?
John Gray
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Re: Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
Yep. RAID 1 only protects you from hardware errors, any software corruption will happily get mirrored to both disks.John Gray wrote:Thanks, that's what I thought, but I've never had to do it in anger since if any file gets corrupted on a (bad) first disk, this gets copied across to the (good) second disk, doesn't it?
StuartR
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Re: Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
Any corrupted data will happily get backed up to any clone or backup, and from experience, it can be some years before you are aware that what you thought was a safe copy has been unusable for a decade.
I would assume that if there is hardware corruption making part of one drive unreadable, the Raid software would not attempt to duplicate it. But I can't be sure.
I don't think there is an easy (i.e. cheap) solution to protecting yourself against instantaneous recovery from data corruption as it happens.
Unless you know better?
I would assume that if there is hardware corruption making part of one drive unreadable, the Raid software would not attempt to duplicate it. But I can't be sure.
I don't think there is an easy (i.e. cheap) solution to protecting yourself against instantaneous recovery from data corruption as it happens.
Unless you know better?
Leif
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- PlatinumLounger
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Re: Using RAID 1 as a method of cloning
How on earth could I ever know better than you, O Leif?!Leif wrote:Unless you know better?
John Gray
"(or one of the team)" - how your appointment letter indicates you won't be seeing the Consultant...
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