SSD to HDD nightly bootable clone

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beengone

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Apr 21, 2013
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Setting up a machine for a client and want to install an SSD due to some problems with software load times and a long MS Access process. At first I thought I'd get two SSDs and set them up to mirror using RAID1. However, due to the writes being the same on both, that seems like a higher possibility of failure at the same time. So, I'd instead like to do a nightly bootable clone to a spinning drive so if the SSD fails they can just unplug it and boot from the HDD until we clone back to a replacement SSD. Is this logical? What's the best way to set this up to happen nightly on a Windows box?

Thanks.
 
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spooky2th
I would set up software like Acronis True Image to backup/clone automatically. That way you will always have 2 copies of the same drive depending on the last backup executed.
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beengone

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Apr 21, 2013
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I wondered if this was best. The more I think about it, the more I realize you're right. Thanks.
 
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spooky2th

spooky2th

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May 18, 2010
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I've been using True Image for a couple years now. Found True Image 2013 on sale a few months ago at newegg for $19.99, so I upgraded from TI 2012. I use it for backups and cloning drives. It works great and is easy to use. Sets up drives however you want, MBR layout or GPT layout. I also have Acronis Disk Director 11. There is an option in TI 2013 to make a boot-able CD with both programs on the CD with the option to boot into either program. The boot-able CD has proven to most invaluable to me.
 
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beengone

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Installed TI 2013 and tried to make this work. Sadly, I'm not able to make a bootable backup using Disk Backup. The "Make this media bootable" part is grayed out and according to their site that's by design if you don't use optical or flash media, you can't do it. This is frustrating, but maybe there's another way you know of? I would love the image to be incremental if possible and I want it to run each night. Doing a regular TI backup won't work as I only have two drives. If the first fails (the SSD) I then could boot to optical disk. This is sort of like having RAID 1 configured, except it won't be real-time, but will be nightly. And it won't be an immediate fail-over, it will mean a reboot.

The only options I see in TI are to create backups on the second drive and I'm not clear from the manual whether I could even restore the backup to the same drive, therefore requiring a third drive to get things going relatively quickly. Please tell me I'm missing something and I can create a nightly bootable backup. Here's hoping....

Thanks
 
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spooky2th

spooky2th

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May 18, 2010
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I just checked and the "Make this media bootable" part is grayed out for me too. I didn't realize this as I never use that tab. I think that you can back up the whole drive incrementally or other options, and restore the data to the original drive and it will remain boot-able. I would test it and make sure before you start relying on it.

I just use the tab: Backup and recovery/Other backups/File backup
And I clone drives at times, which is pretty fast.

I make two copies (incremental) on two HDD's of my documents, pictures, music, videos and contacts. The first copy is always time consuming as I have about 100gigs to back up. Afterwards the incremental backups are a snap. And I can restore the folders or individual files anywhere.

Have you thought about cloning a drive every night or every other night or so? I don't see a option to set this up automatically.
 
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beengone

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I did a bunch of research and contacted a few companies. Basically, doesn't exist as far as I can tell. In my case I'm going to rely on two options at once and can restore to where my client needs depending on where they are in their process cycle.

1) I'm making the second drive a clone and unplug it. The client will decide whether they want me to come in at regular intervals (monthly?) plug in the drive, create a new clone, unplug it, and go or if they want to just plan that when they update major software.
2) I'll set it up to run incremental backups probably weekly or nightly to their NAS. That way we're covered in both ways. The first won't let them go back to last night, but if they just need it working again, great. If they already copied this months files to it and it crashed we can take a few hours and restore.

Not ideal, but usable while we wait for them to get their new server in and running. At that time I'll probably just grab a second SDD and leave it in the box to wait for a failure then restore from the backup at that time.

I hope Acronis makes something like what I want though. Would be slick.
 
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