RAID1 plus additional drive?

[ats64mod]

I want to set up a RAID1 configuration with two identical 640GB drives. I also want to use my old drive (320GB) which would not be part of the array to back up critical data.

Question - is this possible? I have an Intel 975XBX board that supports Intel RAID and the three drives noted above (all SATA).

Thanks.

[Aaron_8015]

Yes... I use a similar setup except I have two drives in raid0 and a third drive for my media....

[ats64mod]

Thanks for the answer. Next question...

Is it also possible to take an image of the RAID array for disaster recovery (such as potent virus, etc)? In this way, I'd have two 640GB RAID1 drives and, say, another 640GB drive holding the image. Can you then restore the image to the RAIDed drives? How is this best performed? Will Acronis do this (restore an image to RAIDed drives)?

Reason for doing this is that I just lost a Raptor to mechanical failure - lost operating system, programs, settings, etc. Fortunately, data was backed up on secondary internal drive (but, unfortunately, did not have image of primary drive).

[EXreaction]

Why would you store an image of the raid array on another drive? In raid 1 with two drives you still have a copy of the data if one of the drives die.

[ats64mod]

If you somehow get a virus or a corrupted OS, then I assume it affects both drives in the array (since they are exact copies). Having a back-up image of the last known good configuration seems like a reasonable thing to do... provided it's in fact possible to take an image of a pair of RAIDed drives.

[EXreaction]

well, sure, that can be done, but if you get a virus it could very easily infect your backups too.

Also, when you setup a Raid array it should act like one single drive in the OS.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Hi, and (as no-one has said it already) WELCOME TO TECHIMO - from the Folding@Home Team [#111]....!

If you want to have that level of backup, then what I would suggest would be to have a RAID1 for your OS and data, and use the other (320 GB) drive to store all images you create (with whatever imaging software you use - I use DriveImage, but I've heard good things about Knoppix or at least that's what I think it is called too) which you could then remove from the machine and store separately...

That way, if a drive fails you can simply replace the drive and carry on as per usual, but if there's some form of corruption you should be able to use the image (that is stored elsewhere, not inside the machine - or at least not plugged in) to restore the drive to an earlier state.....



Oh, and as EX has said, the OS would see the 2 x 640 GB drives as one 640 GB drive....but DiskManagement would see it as two disks...

[GroundZero3]

In a raid 1, the two drives would show up as one drive with a size of 640 GB........

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

D'oh, I hadn't eaten, and had confused RAID1 and RAID0 when I posted that...

[GroundZero3]

<3