Mirroring HD for reformat backup purposes

Cronos18 · September 29th, 2009, 12:38 PM

Hey there just wondering how to go about mirrioring one of my sata III hard drives to the other. I have one that currently has vista os installed and all my data on it, but plan to swipe it after I reformat the other to the settings I want + drivers etc. To do this do I just go into bios and ask it to boot from the new hard drive partition then insert OS disk regular reformat, set everything up, then go to bios ask to load other drive with data on it, reformat it, then go back to bios, go to the HD that had no data on it but has been configured the way i want with Drivers etc and just do a files and settings transfer from one to the other. Then just use that drive until I want to reformat, reformat and then use file and settings transfer quickly from my second drive to get back to my exact settings?

Somewhat confusing but really all i want to do is have my second drive as a complete backup reformat partition that i can quickly access files and settings from and put em onto my first drive if it gets all messed up, Any options that would be better/more efficient than i said, or if what i said won't work I'd like to know. Thanks for the help in advance.

EXreaction · September 29th, 2009, 12:45 PM

Clonezilla will do that.

Nude_Lewd_Man · September 29th, 2009, 04:35 PM

I think I know what you're trying to do - in the long run at least - it sounds very similar to what I have on all my (XP) PCs now...

I have the OS and data on one drive and have a second HDD for backups of the system. Personally, I use DriveImage (7.0) and have set it up to do a weekly image of the primary HDD and store that on the second. If anything gets itself FUBARed up, then I can be back to how the machine was at any of the stored image backup points. I also have it set to only keep 4 images, so that it doesn't need any future "house keeping" to stop it filling the disk but allows me to go back almost a month.

I've tested/demonstrated that it works as a file backup plan too, as you can browse within the image to recover individual files and/or folders.

Another application that my last employers used to use was Acronis, but this was predominantly on servers and used as a DR plan......

Cronos18 · September 29th, 2009, 08:26 PM

Im going to look into clonezilla (exreaction mentioned this, thanks for the help before about sata hard drives i think it was) as well as Drive image 7.0, I've downloaded a trial of acronis before but never really investigated it because by the time i got after reformatting i already had too much crap on my HD lol.

I've just got a credit card, as well have a paypal account so if i need to purchase a program that shouldnt be a problem but a free trial or freeware program that works well doing any of the methods of backup is fine by me.

Anyways mirroring was just one option of which I was thinking of using then "stoping it" as soon as I got the used drive back to the saved reformat from the second drive. But the backup method on a second drive and then replacing the data on the primary used drive with this data would be best if it's fast and efficient. If it's like a complete OS and file and settings restore from the second drive to the first that sounds great. Just got home going to check out each program, Thanks for the input thus far.

Sorry lots of grammar and spelling mistakes.

EXreaction · September 29th, 2009, 09:37 PM

Clonezilla is free, though it's probably not as user friendly as one of the applications you have to pay for.

Cronos18 · October 5th, 2009, 09:21 PM

Alright I reformatted, installed drivers programs etc to my preference, everything is looking great. And I formatted the second drive.

Just a quick question, Can I simply log my first drive with the OS and copy all the data from it to the second drive with nothing on it. (Copy everything from my C drive to my D drive essentially) Will this work? Considering its just one file system if it was to be copied exactly the way it was over would I have any problems, I can't think of a reason why this wouldn't work other then maybe they would be set to be read but not write or I couldn't access copying all files because some of them are in use.

Just wondering, clonezilla looks kind of confusing from what I've read. Just need something I can use to backup the files and then simply copy n drag em back over to my primary drive and or take a image and load it back to the primary drive.

EXreaction · October 5th, 2009, 10:14 PM

If you want something pretty and user friendly, be prepared to pay for it.

Cronos18 · October 6th, 2009, 11:50 AM

Ended up using Drive Image Xls which is also free. Worked pretty good only took an hour to write from one drive to the other for 70gb worth of uncompressed data. Got a mirror image as well copied to the drive. Going to save me 4-5 hours of intense formatting so I'm quite happy about the ordeal. Thanks for the advice.