CyberDyneSystems
09-14-2003, 07:20 PM
Software RAID in WinXp. An experiment leads me to “MirrorFolder 2.0”
Here’s what was going through my mind….
I have now nearly 17 gigabytes of Images I have taken with digital cameras. The vast majority of that space being taken up by files created after April 2003, when I got my 6 megapixel Canon Eos 10D.
For the first time ever I have Data that I am VERY VERY concerned about and is totally irreplaceable.
Understand that,. never has this concerned me much before.
And thus,. I have bad habits. Oh, I was an early adopter of CD-R (got my first unit from Phillips,. A 2X SCSI model for $600.00 :D ) and do indeed have moments where I burn everything to disk. But I am not in the habit.
Now on any given evening I may come home with 200 new images,.. hard won images of wildlife where I had to climb trees,. Or risk dropping all my gear in the lake.
But, as I said,. I am simply not going to get in the habit of burning to disk every day. In the past I had used simple batch files and a second hard drive,. (xcopy to F: ) but when dealing with 17 gigs, running Xcopy becomes a huge time issue.
A solution needed;
So I wanted RAID Mirroring. A constant real time dual copy on different hard disks. And I wanted it cheap and easy. The trouble was this, my existing hardware. I already run a RAID volume, but it is RAID 0. Two 80 Gig drives striped to combine the capacity and double the speed of the individual drives. This of course puts my valuable data at double the risk of an individual drive as well.
HArdware Raid
One solution would be another pair of 80 gigs for a mirrored striped array (RAID 0 + 1)
But luck would have it I already owned a new 160-gig drive and had little interest in going through the hoops and spending the cash.
OS BAsed Software RAID
So I looked into WinXPs software raid. This is a tough thing to implement as it would effect all three of the existing partitions on my RAID 0 volume including the boot sector,. And it would cause a performance hit to the striped array by teaming it with a software mirror on a single drive. As an aside,.. a Google search of WinXP Software RAID came up with a dozen or so articles explaining that WinXP has no RAID 1 functionality built in???? I have no Idea why so many people think that,. But it is simply not true. It is there indeed.
Software utility RAID
Another option I looked into was a software RAID that PowerQuest, (the makers of the invaluable Partition Magic, and Drive Image) used to make. Alas the program has been discontinued. Do the timing of it’s demise,. I suspect it was not ready for XP.
What I ended up finding however was an even more elegant and flexible solution.
MirrorFolder 2.0
http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.htm?trial
I downloaded the free 30 day trial and I will buy it!
Like a hardware or OS resident RAID, you can set up a software RAID of complete drives. But you can also Mirror specific partitions,. and even better, specific folders.
The Hard drive you use for the mirrored files des not have to be limited to use by the RAID. You can in fact have a G: hard drive of 100 Gigs and mirror a fifty gig partition to it, and you will still be able to use the other 50 gigs of free space without any variation. The mirrored data is stored in a folder (or folders) of your choosing on the 2nd drive.
This is some of the easiest software I think I have ever implemented and yet it has lots of options.
How I implented MirrorFolder 2.0
Here is what I set up.
Once installed I simply browsed to the “Digital Photos” folder where I keep ALL my photos. (it could have been XP’s own “My Pictures” folder or any other. I right clicked on the folder and from the drop down menu clicked on the newly installed “Mirror” option. MirrorFolder’s options window then opened. I selected a destination folder on the backup 160 GIG hard drive I had made previously,.. checked “auto synchronize” for real time monitoring (you can schedule synchronization as well,. Especially handy for using MirrorFolder with removable drives! ) and then hit the “Synchronize” button to make the initial copy (in this case a 17 gig copy!)
I repeated these steps for the “My Documents” folder,. And now all important data is mirrored to a second hard drive in real time!
Performance Concerns
Again, I do not see any performance hit when I am working on images in Photoshop,. WinXP caches a lot to Ram so it is hardly an issue,.. BUT for those who are concerned abut it, keep this is mind. If you have things that are exceedingly hard drive intensive that you feel may be slowed down,. Then don’t mirror them. I don’t mirror any of my applications anyway, but temp folders,. Video caching and work folders etc.. don’t mirror them and you wont have a performance hit at all
Another advantage is this. If I had gone with hardware RAID I would have needed 160 Gigs to mirror everything. As I am only concerned about the data I am producing, that would be about 120 gigabytes of wasted inaccessible space! Now I have used no more than 35 gigs of the 160 Gig drive, and all of the rest of the drive,. All 125 remaining gigs of space is available to me for whatever purpose I see fit. I will of course mirror more folders,. I may even mirror my apps partition,. But the C: drive is left alone (no mirror, no performance hit) and I can continue to use drive image for the C; drive anyways as it is only a 2 gig C; drive partition.
In summation,.
I find this utility/backup tool to be one of the best I have used.
I rank it right up there with PowerQuest’s Drive Image as a MUST HAVE utility!
Highly Recommended! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.htm?trial
Here’s what was going through my mind….
I have now nearly 17 gigabytes of Images I have taken with digital cameras. The vast majority of that space being taken up by files created after April 2003, when I got my 6 megapixel Canon Eos 10D.
For the first time ever I have Data that I am VERY VERY concerned about and is totally irreplaceable.
Understand that,. never has this concerned me much before.
And thus,. I have bad habits. Oh, I was an early adopter of CD-R (got my first unit from Phillips,. A 2X SCSI model for $600.00 :D ) and do indeed have moments where I burn everything to disk. But I am not in the habit.
Now on any given evening I may come home with 200 new images,.. hard won images of wildlife where I had to climb trees,. Or risk dropping all my gear in the lake.
But, as I said,. I am simply not going to get in the habit of burning to disk every day. In the past I had used simple batch files and a second hard drive,. (xcopy to F: ) but when dealing with 17 gigs, running Xcopy becomes a huge time issue.
A solution needed;
So I wanted RAID Mirroring. A constant real time dual copy on different hard disks. And I wanted it cheap and easy. The trouble was this, my existing hardware. I already run a RAID volume, but it is RAID 0. Two 80 Gig drives striped to combine the capacity and double the speed of the individual drives. This of course puts my valuable data at double the risk of an individual drive as well.
HArdware Raid
One solution would be another pair of 80 gigs for a mirrored striped array (RAID 0 + 1)
But luck would have it I already owned a new 160-gig drive and had little interest in going through the hoops and spending the cash.
OS BAsed Software RAID
So I looked into WinXPs software raid. This is a tough thing to implement as it would effect all three of the existing partitions on my RAID 0 volume including the boot sector,. And it would cause a performance hit to the striped array by teaming it with a software mirror on a single drive. As an aside,.. a Google search of WinXP Software RAID came up with a dozen or so articles explaining that WinXP has no RAID 1 functionality built in???? I have no Idea why so many people think that,. But it is simply not true. It is there indeed.
Software utility RAID
Another option I looked into was a software RAID that PowerQuest, (the makers of the invaluable Partition Magic, and Drive Image) used to make. Alas the program has been discontinued. Do the timing of it’s demise,. I suspect it was not ready for XP.
What I ended up finding however was an even more elegant and flexible solution.
MirrorFolder 2.0
http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.htm?trial
I downloaded the free 30 day trial and I will buy it!
Like a hardware or OS resident RAID, you can set up a software RAID of complete drives. But you can also Mirror specific partitions,. and even better, specific folders.
The Hard drive you use for the mirrored files des not have to be limited to use by the RAID. You can in fact have a G: hard drive of 100 Gigs and mirror a fifty gig partition to it, and you will still be able to use the other 50 gigs of free space without any variation. The mirrored data is stored in a folder (or folders) of your choosing on the 2nd drive.
This is some of the easiest software I think I have ever implemented and yet it has lots of options.
How I implented MirrorFolder 2.0
Here is what I set up.
Once installed I simply browsed to the “Digital Photos” folder where I keep ALL my photos. (it could have been XP’s own “My Pictures” folder or any other. I right clicked on the folder and from the drop down menu clicked on the newly installed “Mirror” option. MirrorFolder’s options window then opened. I selected a destination folder on the backup 160 GIG hard drive I had made previously,.. checked “auto synchronize” for real time monitoring (you can schedule synchronization as well,. Especially handy for using MirrorFolder with removable drives! ) and then hit the “Synchronize” button to make the initial copy (in this case a 17 gig copy!)
I repeated these steps for the “My Documents” folder,. And now all important data is mirrored to a second hard drive in real time!
Performance Concerns
Again, I do not see any performance hit when I am working on images in Photoshop,. WinXP caches a lot to Ram so it is hardly an issue,.. BUT for those who are concerned abut it, keep this is mind. If you have things that are exceedingly hard drive intensive that you feel may be slowed down,. Then don’t mirror them. I don’t mirror any of my applications anyway, but temp folders,. Video caching and work folders etc.. don’t mirror them and you wont have a performance hit at all
Another advantage is this. If I had gone with hardware RAID I would have needed 160 Gigs to mirror everything. As I am only concerned about the data I am producing, that would be about 120 gigabytes of wasted inaccessible space! Now I have used no more than 35 gigs of the 160 Gig drive, and all of the rest of the drive,. All 125 remaining gigs of space is available to me for whatever purpose I see fit. I will of course mirror more folders,. I may even mirror my apps partition,. But the C: drive is left alone (no mirror, no performance hit) and I can continue to use drive image for the C; drive anyways as it is only a 2 gig C; drive partition.
In summation,.
I find this utility/backup tool to be one of the best I have used.
I rank it right up there with PowerQuest’s Drive Image as a MUST HAVE utility!
Highly Recommended! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/index.htm?trial