Raid

[jasper37mmi]

my son has an acer aspire 7738g laptop on which one of the hdds is giving him an alert message that the hdd is about to fail what we would like to do is setup a raid array so that if it happens again he has a copy of all his data and os on a second drive but dont know where to get controller or if he needs one

 

[spasmolytic46]

I won't say it doesn't exist, but I've never seen or heard about RAID on a laptop. A better solution would be to use something like Acronis True Image to duplicate the drive.

 

[jitpublisher]

They do make a few laptops with RAID, but they are built that way. There is no way really to RAID a laptop that was not built that way to start with. Where would you put the controller card, extra drive? Also, battery life, weight, and heat become an even bigger problem. Backups to an external drive would be a much better way to go, or as suggested, mirror an image to a backup USB drive every 30 days or so. RAID is not a good tool for file backup, it is good to keep a system, like a server up and running if a drive fails, but it does nothing at all to protect your data.
If you delete a file accidentally, its still gone. If you get a virus or malware, you get it on both drives. If your Windows install becomes corrupted somehow, its corrupted on both drives.

 

[jasper37mmi]

laptop came with two drives installed 2 500gb hitachi travelstar

 

[spasmolytic46]

laptop came with two drives installed 2 500gb hitachi travelstar

Just because you can put two drives on a laptop does not mean it has RAID capabilities. It either needs some form of RAID controller card as part of the motherboard chipset (in which case you can enable it via the BIOS) or you will need to pay for an add on raid card that can connect to your laptop is some form or fashion. There is also a possibility of using a software RAID solution, however it will severely handicap the laptop's performance and as mentioned previously, is not really a back up solution.

You need a software back up solution.