Can I use two SATA-II drives & Win XP for Cloning Backup?

[M. B.]

I am currently running Windows XP SP2 on a one partition hard drive (WD
Caviar SATA-II), which is 250 gigabytes. My curent backup unit is a HP
SureStor DAT 40 tape drive using DDS4.

Since it is now taking me like 5 tapes to backup my system, would the
following solution work for me better? Buy another INTERNAL 250 gig drive
SATA-II (around $120). Use the drive only to make "identical clone copies"
from the C: drive around about once a week using progrtam such as Norton
Ghost or Acronis True Image. So the 2nd drive would be only used for cloning
of the first. In other words in case my C: ever gets corrupted or dies, all
I do is enable the D: drive, which in essence becomes my new C:

The reason I don't want to buy an EXTERNAL drive (such as Maxtor OneTouch II
or alike) is that it takes up space, the data transfer will be slower even
on FireWire and it costs more.

My question is this:

Since I am dealing with SATA-II drives, I need to use the latest True Image
/ Norton Ghost versions. Both require that you run the program directly
from Windows XP. What will happen when I enable the D: drive for the
system boot, as since it's a clone of the C: drive, it also has a boot
sector. Will Windows boot off the correct drive? I assume that I can
disable the D: drive from within the BIOS of my motherboard (ASUS P4C800
Deluxe) for all other computer usage, but somehow I need to start the system
with both drives on in order for the cloning program to work correcly.

Can someone please enlighten me?

 

[Kerry Brown]

I am currently running Windows XP SP2 on a one partition hard drive
(WD Caviar SATA-II), which is 250 gigabytes. My curent backup unit
is a HP SureStor DAT 40 tape drive using DDS4.

Since it is now taking me like 5 tapes to backup my system, would the
following solution work for me better? Buy another INTERNAL 250 gig
drive SATA-II (around $120). Use the drive only to make "identical
clone copies" from the C: drive around about once a week using
progrtam such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image. So the 2nd drive
would be only used for cloning of the first. In other words in case
my C: ever gets corrupted or dies, all I do is enable the D: drive,
which in essence becomes my new C:
The reason I don't want to buy an EXTERNAL drive (such as Maxtor
OneTouch II or alike) is that it takes up space, the data transfer
will be slower even on FireWire and it costs more.

My question is this:

Since I am dealing with SATA-II drives, I need to use the latest True
Image / Norton Ghost versions. Both require that you run the program
directly from Windows XP. What will happen when I enable the D:
drive for the system boot, as since it's a clone of the C: drive, it
also has a boot sector. Will Windows boot off the correct drive? I
assume that I can disable the D: drive from within the BIOS of my
motherboard (ASUS P4C800 Deluxe) for all other computer usage, but
somehow I need to start the system with both drives on in order for
the cloning program to work correcly.
Can someone please enlighten me?

An external backup is always better than an internal backup for the purposes
of disaster recovery. There are many scenarios that will cause data loss on
both drives with an internal drive. Some are PSU failure damaging both
drives, fire, flood, theft, controller failure damaging both drives, and
more. A better solution would a removable tray where the hard drive is
hooked up internally but can easily be removed. You should also keep a
fairly up to date tape backup.

I haven't used TI 9 but TI 8 works well with SATA drives. I don't know about
SATA-II. With TI 8 you can create a bootable CD that you can boot from and
clone/image drives. I assume TI 9 retains this feature. The newer versions
of Ghost as you say don't have this feature. I would not have a cloned drive
hooked up while booting XP. It doesn't always happen but sometimes XP will
do something to one of the drives and render the system unbootable. I have
never been able to figure out exactly what happens or why. That is why I use
TI. It alows me to boot from a CD. Note: You do have to install TI to create
the CD. You can then uninstall it if you want and just use the CD.

Kerry


Kerry

 

[Anna]

I am currently running Windows XP SP2 on a one partition hard drive (WD
Caviar SATA-II), which is 250 gigabytes. My curent backup unit is a HP
SureStor DAT 40 tape drive using DDS4.

Since it is now taking me like 5 tapes to backup my system, would the
following solution work for me better? Buy another INTERNAL 250 gig drive
SATA-II (around $120). Use the drive only to make "identical clone
copies" from the C: drive around about once a week using progrtam such as
Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image. So the 2nd drive would be only used
for cloning of the first. In other words in case my C: ever gets
corrupted or dies, all I do is enable the D: drive, which in essence
becomes my new C:

The reason I don't want to buy an EXTERNAL drive (such as Maxtor OneTouch
II or alike) is that it takes up space, the data transfer will be slower
even on FireWire and it costs more.

My question is this:

Since I am dealing with SATA-II drives, I need to use the latest True
Image / Norton Ghost versions. Both require that you run the program
directly from Windows XP. What will happen when I enable the D: drive
for the system boot, as since it's a clone of the C: drive, it also has a
boot sector. Will Windows boot off the correct drive? I assume that I
can disable the D: drive from within the BIOS of my motherboard (ASUS
P4C800 Deluxe) for all other computer usage, but somehow I need to start
the system with both drives on in order for the cloning program to work
correcly.

Can someone please enlighten me?

M. B.:
You don't need much "enlightenment" - you're obviously on the right track...

But let me make a few comments...

Your backup plan to use a disk imaging program such as the ones you
mentioned to clone the contents of your working HD to another HD is
basically sound. Incidentally, the fact that you're using SATA II drives
(let's call them "SATA 3 Gb/s" - the SATA standard's group (SATA-IO) abhors
the SATA II designation, although it seems most everyone uses that label)
doesn't necessitate using the "latest" version of the DI programs you
mentioned. We routinely use the Ghost 2003 program (using a Ghost bootable
floppy disk or Ghost bootable CD) to carry out our cloning operations with
SATA 3 Gb/s drives.

You didn't mention the make/model of your motherboard so I'm going to assume
you do not have available an eSATA port where you could connect a SATA HD to
that port, thus using the drive as an external device with the obvious
advantage of physically disconnecting the drive from the system when it
would not be used during a cloning operation (similar, of course, to a
USB/Firewire external HD). Another major advantage of using a SATA HD in
this fashion is that even though the drive resides physically outside the
computer, the system treats it as an *internal* device, so you get all the
performance advantages inherent in a SATA HD, including the not
inconsiderable advantage that your "external" SATA HD containing a cloned
copy of the XP OS will be bootable, unlike a USB/Firewire EHD that will not
have that capability.

BTW, you may be interested in another device that we came across that you
can use to connect an external SATA HD. It's called the SATAPOWPLAT1,
manufactured or distributed by StarTech. It's available from
http://www.cwol.com for about $19 (incl shipping) - at least the last time I
looked. buy.com shows it for much cheaper, but it never seems to be in
stock. I assume the device is also available from other online vendors.

That device is simply attached to the I/O bracket on the computer case's
backplane. It comes with two external connectors - the SATA data connector
and the 15-pin SATA power connector. Internally (the other side of its slot
plate) is, of course, the SATA data connector and the normal 4-pin Molex
power plug. So it's a simple matter to connect the device to one of the
power leads of your computer's power supply.

On the other hand, as you've suggested, you can set up your second SATA HD
as an internal HD and use is that way as the recipient of the clone. The
negative to this arrangement is that both your source & destination drives
are *always* connected and it makes a backup system more vulnerable to this
or that problem, e.g., electrical surges that might take out both drives,
possibility of data corruption through some sort of malware, etc. Admittedly
a minor consideration in my experience, but present nevertheless.

One thing to keep in mind. Immediately after the cloning operation, it is
imperative that you boot to the newly-cloned HD as the *only* drive
connected at that time. You must disconnect your source drive before doing
so. This is to avoid future boot problems with the cloned HD. Setting the
boot order to boot to the cloned drive with your source drive still
connected will *not* be sufficient. The source drive must be disconnected at
that initial boot to the cloned HD. After that initial boot, it's of no
consequence that both drives be subsequently connected. The cloned drive, in
that instance, will be bootable at any later time.
Anna