Mirror a RAID0 volume

2

I have two SSD running in RAID0. The capacity and speed are just great. I use Windows Home Server to do incremental daily backups. This is fine and well and I've successfully restored from these backups.

However. When one of the disks physically died. I was stuck without a working system until the replacement arrives so that I can restore the array from backup. WHS restoration takes about 5 hours which basically means that I'm losing entire day for the process.

Is it possible to set up kind of a recovery volume for the RAID array? Use a single mechanical HDD that would be updated with the exact clone of the RAID array on a daily basis.

This way if the array goes offline for some reason, I can just boot from the mechanical HDD, lose some perf but will still be able to work.

The machine in question runs Windows 7. Creating RAID01 is not an option because of the high price of the SSD and the fact that it still doesn't protect against failure of RAID controller.

Is there any way it can be set up?

Ghostrider

Posted 2010-09-14T23:40:57.807

Reputation: 564

Acronis true image can do a volume clone (which is not incremental) but is fast enough to back up 1TB volume overnight. However it can't be scripted and requires a reboot. I'm looking for something that would do a similar thing via VSS – Ghostrider – 2010-09-15T00:14:27.730

I've deleted my previous answer the RAID stuff is not what you're after and my recommendation for RAID levels was impractical at best utter rubbish at worst :-) you should check you storagecraft shadowprotect. It's designed for backup and recovery but can be scripted and configured to clone drives rather than simply backup. It also makes use of VSS as far as I can recall. http://www.storagecraft.com/kb/questions.php?questionid=101

– chunkyb2002 – 2010-09-15T03:22:50.507

Answers

0

I have heard about people using RAID 0+1 or 1+0 (either of which would work for you) but the performance would not be as fast as a pure RAID 0 setup (though it would still be plenty fast if you are running two SSD). I am in a similar situation as you but with three SSDs in a RAID 0 array, so my chances of failure are high, and I have had failure multiple times. After the second failure (and second RMA)

I just installed everything on a regular HDD in RAID mode (you do not need multiple disks to do this) then I ghost the SSD RAID 0 array from that HDD when I need to. The HDD is not usually hooked up to my system, it is just a drive that has everything I want installed on it and nothing else, that way when I ghost it is like having a clean install of everything.

This requires me to keep all of my data (music, photos, and other files) on a separate drive that is not the system drive (I actually use two drives so my data is double safe), but I do that anyways so it is not an issue for me. This setup allows me to have the best performance with RAID 0, and allows me to quickly get back up and running should my RAID 0 array fail, all without loosing any data (again, because I do not store anything on the system drive which is the RAID 0 array).

ubiquibacon

Posted 2010-09-14T23:40:57.807

Reputation: 7 287

Asked: 2010-09-14T23:40:57.807

Viewed: 305 times

Active: 2017-05-06T07:34:02.397