New Storage Config Questions

[swingking03]

Currently, I have four HDDs and one SSD; the HDDs cary in range, size and age with one being a very old Maxtor drive. I am looking to upgrade in this area to simplify things and had the following questions for advice:

1. Is it ideal to have one HDD for all my storage (games, movies, music, documents, etc)? The OS is on the SSD.
2. I also have a 3TB external I wish to use for backup. Since I am new to backing up, what is the best method for doing this (image vs. files & folders)?
3. Can the SSD and OS be backed up onto the same external? I would like to have th OS bootable in case my SSD fails. I have read about backing up the OS to a USB...is this recommended?

I know my question is a bit long winded, but looking for some advice from the community. Thanks!

 

[Hawkeye22]

1. Depends on how large your files are. For an OS and just a few programs, one drive is fine.

2. You'll proabbly want to image your OS drive/partition and do file backups for the rest.

3. As long as your external has enough space, you can put all backups on the external.

You can't boot from your backup/image, but you could restore the image and then boot up normally. For example, you need a larger SSD. Insert the new SSD, restore the OS image you have onto it, swap the old SSD for the new one and boot. Most backup software will allow you to create a rescue disk so that you can boot directly from the rescue disk to do a restore.

 

[swingking03]

1. Depends on how large your files are. For an OS and just a few programs, one drive is fine.

2. You'll proabbly want to image your OS drive/partition and do file backups for the rest.

3. As long as your external has enough space, you can put all backups on the external.

You can't boot from your backup/image, but you could restore the image and then boot up normally. For example, you need a larger SSD. Insert the new SSD, restore the OS image you have onto it, swap the old SSD for the new one and boot. Most backup software will allow you to create a rescue disk so that you can boot directly from the rescue disk to do a restore.

What backup software do you recommend?

Can you please explain how that works? A rescue disk allows me to boot, then I am able to "unpact" the image of my OS??? Sorry for being a pain, but I am consfused.

 

[popatim]

Yes your windows rescue disk can restore your image but not specific files with the system image.

Your external drive may have come with backup software.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Try Easeus todo backup

http://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html

or Acronis True Image.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/trueimage/

 

[Szyrs]

1. Is it ideal to have one HDD for all my storage (games, movies, music, documents, etc)? The OS is on the SSD.
2. I also have a 3TB external I wish to use for backup. Since I am new to backing up, what is the best method for doing this (image vs. files & folders)?
3. Can the SSD and OS be backed up onto the same external? I would like to have th OS bootable in case my SSD fails. I have read about backing up the OS to a USB...is this recommended?

1. If you are using a HDD (traditional platter type hard drive) for your OS, it is recommended to have a dedicated disk for your OS and Programs. This is due to the additional work that the read heads would have to cover if they also had to seek, read & write your data files. If you plan on using an SSD for your OS, you only need to leave enough free space on the drive to allow TRIM to function properly, as there are few to no moving parts to stress and fast enough speeds for you to never notice the difference.

2. Acronis will mirror your drives, so you get both, as Haykeye22 suggested. System will cover your OS ect. Files is to back up your actual data. It's pretty much what is important to you. If you use programs with lots of saved profiles and preferences, you may wish to back them up. If you use them straight out of the box, it's perhaps not worth your while. I personally back up my files and data constantly and do one system image after a clean OS install has downloaded and installed all updates and drivers. This means that if something goes wrong, I'm back to a clean install and am reasonably assured that I'm not including any malware or viruses in my backups.

3. USBs still fail, DVDs get scratched - it's really up to you and what media you trust most. ZIP drives are old and out of date but still quite reliable. Magnetic tape drives are still popular in servers ect ect.
You can back multiple drives up onto one single drive, just never back up onto the same drive or a separate partition on the same drive. It seems logical but people really do do it - and defend their decision...

As a final note, external drives are great for mobility but I personally can't understand their popularity as back up devices. What you are doing is backing up a physical disk to protect yourself from disk failure. When you back up an internal disk drive that is rigidly mounted inside a computer chassis that almost never moves at all (especially while it's running), onto an internal disk mounted inside a cheap plastic case that gets picked up, knocked over, dropped, slid around ect ect ect, you are asking for trouble. External hard disks endure all kinds of punishment and it's reflected in their lifespan. I have personally never had an internal drive fail on me, in many years of computing. I am aware that it happens though. I have gone through many many external hard drives in the same amount of time though. I have never had an external hard drive that has lasted more than a year in use. I would recommend using smaller external drives if you need to have your files and data mobile, or simply dedicating an internal drive to back up. By using one or more smaller external drives, if it/one fails, you are limiting your loss to say 500GB-1TB, as opposed to 3TB - possibly all your files and your system images. I use both methods, an old 300GB internal drive for system images, RAID1 for file and data redundancy and a small 1TB laptop drive for an external drive, for when I want something mobile. I realise that most people can't afford this system, but even with the high price tag, it's no guarantee that I'll never lose data.