Boot Drive Redundancy

1

I run a video game store and I have two cash register's. Recently I have been having problems with SDD's failing, and since it costs me money whenever a register is down, I would like to implement a way to have a SSD and a HDD backup. Is there a way that I can put Windows 7 on a 64GB SSD and have a 100GB HDD and is the SSD fails then the HDD can take over seamlessly?

I would like it so that if the SSD or HDD failed that it would make it seem like it never happened and the other drive would be able to take over and do all the work?

P.S. I want to understand exactly what I'm doing too if I find a solution haha.

Thanks so much!

EDIT: I tried RAID1 already and upon say unplugging the SSD the OS would freeze and nothing would respond. Then I would restart without the SSD plugged in and it would not find a bootable drive. Is there another step I have to take? I follwed this tutorial: http://buildegg.com/bewp/?p=44 Except for I used the SSD as the Boot and used the HDD as a mirror.

Cody Butz

Posted 2013-02-24T17:21:43.027

Reputation: 11

1You've tagged RAID. That is your solution. – Jasjeev Singh – 2013-02-24T17:24:13.673

Depends on if your computer already supports raid or not... Can you post more info about your system? Many new motherboards support onboard intel raid : http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/sftwr-prod/imsm

– Brian Adkins – 2013-02-24T17:24:34.510

Meant to leave this link above: http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm#desk

– Brian Adkins – 2013-02-24T17:27:58.290

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4305 Is the Mobo I am using – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T20:58:43.170

Answers

1

Windows 7 supports pure software RAID for mirrors without need for hardware RAID cards or fake RAID such as IRST.

To install that add a second drive of at least the same size (bigger is fine).

Than add a mirror via disk management.

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If you have a separate 100 MB partition then you also want to mirror this one. If you do not do that then you still have a nice backup off all your data, but you can't boot. The extra backup is nice, but no boot kind a defeats the whole point for you.

Other options are hardware RAID (but what if the RAID card fails?) and IRST (as already linked in the comments). Both both of those will require driver changes, or possibly a windows re-installation.

Hennes

Posted 2013-02-24T17:21:43.027

Reputation: 60 739

I didn't know the System Reserve was important so I am trying to test that now. Thank you! – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T21:07:18.053

The SSD drive doesn't have a System Reserve partition. – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T21:10:05.360

In that case a mirror as above might work quite well. However do test things so you can discover items like a missing MBR in time. – Hennes – 2013-02-24T21:34:07.877

0

For this I would use a RAID 1 (mirror)- you can't afford downtime or to have to rebuild the system. The only problem is it is quite expensive to buy 2 SSDs, and if you mix an HDD and SSD, the mirror will only perform at the speed of the slowest drive (so you'd lose the benefit of having the SSD).

If you can afford to RAID 2x SSDs together in RAID 1, then go for that. But otherwise, just get a couple of regular mechanical HDDs and some your money. I'm not sure if a cash register would benefit significantly from the increased speed of an SSD -does it seem more responsive than using mechanical drives?

Out of interest- what brand/model SSD are you using? I'm using a 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe SSD and it's working perfectly.

Austin ''Danger'' Powers

Posted 2013-02-24T17:21:43.027

Reputation: 5 992

I used RAID1 and upon say unplugging the SSD the OS would freeze and nothing would respond. Is there another step I have to take? I follwed this tutorial: http://buildegg.com/bewp/?p=44 Except for I used the SSD as the Boot and used the HDD as a mirror.

– Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T20:56:23.540

SSD is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-148-528&ParentOnly=1

– Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T21:02:31.197

It sounds like you're unplugging the SSD while the PC is running! Even though SATA is technically hot-swappable, there is no guarantee of perfect system stability if you do this in reality. I would always shut down the PC temporarily before unplugging or connecting drives. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-02-24T21:03:52.513

Wouldn't that replicate Hard Drive failure though? I just need something that will continue running and reboot after the SSD or HDD fails. – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T21:06:32.810

Yes, it should. If you're testing how it responds in that situation that's ok, but if you're just adding or swapping out a failed drive, shutting down first is better (anything to avoid risking corruption on the good drive).

This addresses your sub-question directly:

http://serverfault.com/questions/216160/would-unplugging-a-drive-simulate-a-drive-failure

– Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-02-24T21:13:57.487

Thank you :) I knew it may have repercussions but I just needed something to simulate failure. Whats my best option if it wont boot from the HDD at this point? – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T21:20:17.000

The Mirrored HDD* – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T21:20:36.470

Unplugging part of a mirror should work, even if the drive is in use. However depending on the drives (model, firmware etc) the drive might hang the bus. As for hot-unplugging: AHCI supports it, so SATA drives in normal AHCI mode should allow that. SATA drives in ancient IDE mode are something else. And for top security go for a SAS controller and SAS drives. However at this point just having a third register PC or a third drive as a spare might be cheaper. – Hennes – 2013-02-24T21:37:34.050

Well the thing is that I may be across the state and not be able to go repair it in enough time. We have procedures if computers fail but we need something that I know if it fails that it still works 100% and I don't need to be there to put a new computer into effect. It's a very unique situation. – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T22:31:03.130

If it just fails it should be fine- I wouldn't expect it to cause the PC to hang. I would just add to the procedure "reboot PC" if it hangs just to cover yourself. However it shouldn't even come to that- the system should just run in a degraded state. I've seen many RAID 5 arrays suffer 1 drive failure and they kept running, also I have a RAID 1 array in my home PC, and Windows doesn't even notice when I disconnect one to test stability during drive failure. In fact the first thing I did when I set up my own mirror was test it the same way you are testing yours and it carried on quite happily. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-02-24T22:39:15.587

I am getting totally different results, Windows hangs whenever I unplug it while it is running (whether it be the SSD or HDD) so it doesn't really have me sold atm. I am trying to do it right now with two HDD's and hopefully that will work. Could it be because I am using a SSD and a HDD, and when its on the HDD it needs System Reserve? Just a thought... – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T23:18:01.213

Oh I should add- I've only tried this with HDD RAID arrays. So maybe you'll have better luck with a couple of HDDs in your array. You're doing the right thing by testing out different scenarios though. Does it crash when you take the SATA cable out, or the power cable? Which one are you disconnecting first? I always connect/disconnect SATA first, then connect/disconnect power after that- I read it's good practice to do it in that order. I swapped a bad drive on a RAID 5 array once, like this: "SATA out first, then power out, (replaced drive), then SATA in first, finally power back in". – Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-02-24T23:32:58.260

I tried the HDD first by unplugging the SATA cable, froze the computer so I restarted, rebooted fine. Then on next apttempt I unplugged SATA from SSD, froze but wouldn't find bootable drive. So I plugged SSD back in and worked fine. – Cody Butz – 2013-02-24T23:34:58.860

I would probably just go for a couple of SSDs in RAID 1 in that case. The SSD model you're using looks relatively cheap so the cost won't be too bad to run two. It sounds like you get a good recovery after a reboot on SSD- so that looks like the best way to go (for your particular configuration). However- assuming the system will crash if a drive fails, I would disable write caching for your RAID array in Device Manager. It can make a world of difference in terms of data corruption when a system crashes- and on a till (and in most cases) you'll want to do everything possible to avoid that. – Austin ''Danger'' Powers – 2013-02-24T23:53:25.117

let us continue this discussion in chat

– Cody Butz – 2013-02-25T01:14:58.760

Asked: 2013-02-24T17:21:43.027

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Active: 2013-02-24T20:57:45.663