New hard drive...what to do.

mickeddie

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Dec 9, 2004
750
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My current drive is 300gb and my new one is 250gb. I got the new one for a really good price and only need it as a back-up drive. I thought I'd set it up in RAID 1, but then I read that the new drive has to be the same size or bigger then the current drive. So now what are my options, aside from just leaving it as another drive but NOT in RAID (in which case I would have to get something like Norton Ghost??). Would using it in RAID 1 decrease the amount of space on my primary drive (like RAID 0)?

Thanks!!

Eddie
 

pat

Expert
My current drive is 300gb and my new one is 250gb. I got the new one for a really good price and only need it as a back-up drive. I thought I'd set it up in RAID 1, but then I read that the new drive has to be the same size or bigger then the current drive. So now what are my options, aside from just leaving it as another drive but NOT in RAID (in which case I would have to get something like Norton Ghost??). Would using it in RAID 1 decrease the amount of space on my primary drive (like RAID 0)?

Thanks!!

Eddie


good luck at mirroring a 300gb HDD on a 250gb hdd...
 

JMecc

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Oct 26, 2006
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18,780
I would just leave it as a backup drive until you feel like reinstalling windows, at which point you can use the 2 drives in RAID.

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but is it possible to partition magic the 300gb to 250gb+50gb and then set the 250 gb on mirror with his new drive (to have 250gb raid1 + 50gb backup / unpartitioned)?

Jo
 

pat

Expert
I would just leave it as a backup drive until you feel like reinstalling windows, at which point you can use the 2 drives in RAID.

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but is it possible to partition magic the 300gb to 250gb+50gb and then set the 250 gb on mirror with his new drive (to have 250gb raid1 + 50gb backup / unpartitioned)?

Jo

no.. when you activate RAID, the controller is now using a different set of command from RAID bios) and work differently from a normal IDE controller..

A RAID drive is composed of 2 HDD. once RAIDed, the 2 hdd will be viewable as one (the size of the smaller one for RAID 1 and the size of the smaller on x 2 for RAID0) by the system and the unused space will be lost
 

linux_0

Splendid
I would just leave it as a backup drive until you feel like reinstalling windows, at which point you can use the 2 drives in RAID.

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but is it possible to partition magic the 300gb to 250gb+50gb and then set the 250 gb on mirror with his new drive (to have 250gb raid1 + 50gb backup / unpartitioned)?

Jo


No.

You can't RAID the drives without deleting everything on both of them.

You could RAID1 a 250 and a 300 but your RAID1 would be 250GB but again you have to wipe both drives clean to make the array then put the OS and data back on and you cannot do that without having a 3rd storage device to put the data on temporarily.
 

mickeddie

Distinguished
Dec 9, 2004
750
0
18,990
I would just leave it as a backup drive until you feel like reinstalling windows, at which point you can use the 2 drives in RAID.

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but is it possible to partition magic the 300gb to 250gb+50gb and then set the 250 gb on mirror with his new drive (to have 250gb raid1 + 50gb backup / unpartitioned)?

Jo


No.

You can't RAID the drives without deleting everything on both of them.

You could RAID1 a 250 and a 300 but your RAID1 would be 250GB but again you have to wipe both drives clean to make the array then put the OS and data back on and you cannot do that without having a 3rd storage device to put the data on temporarily.

Oh! I didn't know that. I guess I'll have to get something like Norton Ghost to mirror the old drive to the new one (as long as I don't use more than 250gb of space) or just copy my important files and folders occasionally.
 

linux_0

Splendid
I would just leave it as a backup drive until you feel like reinstalling windows, at which point you can use the 2 drives in RAID.

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but is it possible to partition magic the 300gb to 250gb+50gb and then set the 250 gb on mirror with his new drive (to have 250gb raid1 + 50gb backup / unpartitioned)?

Jo


No.

You can't RAID the drives without deleting everything on both of them.


You could RAID1 a 250 and a 300 but your RAID1 would be 250GB but again you have to wipe both drives clean to make the array then put the OS and data back on and you cannot do that without having a 3rd storage device to put the data on temporarily.

Oh! I didn't know that. I guess I'll have to get something like Norton Ghost to mirror the old drive to the new one (as long as I don't use more than 250gb of space) or just copy my important files and folders occasionally.




There is a free and open source solution to this problem.

Download and install http://cygwin.com/setup.exe along with rsync


Then all you have to do is run this command to backup your data:

[code:1:efe3117803]
rsync -alprtv /cygdrive/c/ /cygdrive/d/
[/code:1:efe3117803]


The problem is windows will prevent you from copying certain files, however user data should copy fine.

See here for the rsync documentation:

http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/documentation.html


GL :-D