Disk mirroring: Ghost, PowerQuest's Drive Image

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve Jenkins
  • Start date Start date
S

Steve Jenkins

So,

I've got a server, server A that has two identical disks disk 1 & disk
2. I've been reading about disk mirroring, and have a few questions -
don't know if anyone can help:

- How slow are options like Norton Ghost and PowerQuest's Drive Image?
The machine has 2GHZ and 512 MB RAM, but the drives are 120GB.
Supposing 1 is full and 2 is totally empty and I'm copying from 1 to
2. Will it take days or just say 3-4 hours?

- Will those packages include all the boot sectors, etc? Would I
actually want it to copy those things?

- If disk1 failed, what would I actually _do_ to get the machine to
use disk2? What would I change and where?

If anyone can help at all I'd be most grateful ....
Thanks, Steve.
 
Mirroring and imaging are two different concepts.

With mirroring, the operating system will maintain a mirror image
of the main disk. It will update it continuously as things change.
You cannot boot directly from the mirror disk.

An imaging program takes a snapshot of a disk, either onto
another disk or into an image file. The snapshot does NOT
change over time, unless you update it. If the target of the
snapshot is a disk then you can boot off that disk.

If your disk of 120 GBytes is almost full then you must have
your data mixed with your operating system. This is not the
way most servers are configured: They maintain a strict
separation between OS & apps (drive C:), and data (drive D:).
Imaging really comes into its own when you enforce this
separation: If and when the OS fails, you simply restore the
previous OS image, without touching your data on drive D:.
You can't do this when your data is on drive C: . . .

See below for further answers.


Steve Jenkins said:
So,

I've got a server, server A that has two identical disks disk 1 & disk
2. I've been reading about disk mirroring, and have a few questions -
don't know if anyone can help:

- How slow are options like Norton Ghost and PowerQuest's Drive Image?
The machine has 2GHZ and 512 MB RAM, but the drives are 120GB.
Supposing 1 is full and 2 is totally empty and I'm copying from 1 to
2. Will it take days or just say 3-4 hours?
Click to expand...

Allow for about 1 minute per GByte.

- Will those packages include all the boot sectors, etc? Would I
actually want it to copy those things?
Click to expand...

These packages make a carbon copy of the source disk, warts and all.

- If disk1 failed, what would I actually _do_ to get the machine to
use disk2? What would I change and where?
Click to expand...

You rip out disk1, then make disk2 the primary master.
 
What about someone who has only one drive letter; can they separate this into two? And what
will the second drive become, if possible? How can one have the drive letters be as they
would be, if this were done in the beginning? Suppose you might say, disconnect both the
CD-RW and the DVD-RW. Well, there, I may have "stumbled" onto me on answer.

And yes, I am already in the Sherry. And sherry (blonde).

--
Regards,
don
(Email is a nada;reply here is a granada)
Happy Holidays
"My buddy, Pegasus"
---

Mirroring and imaging are two different concepts.

With mirroring, the operating system will maintain a mirror image
of the main disk. It will update it continuously as things change.
You cannot boot directly from the mirror disk.

An imaging program takes a snapshot of a disk, either onto
another disk or into an image file. The snapshot does NOT
change over time, unless you update it. If the target of the
snapshot is a disk then you can boot off that disk.

If your disk of 120 GBytes is almost full then you must have
your data mixed with your operating system. This is not the
way most servers are configured: They maintain a strict
separation between OS & apps (drive C:), and data (drive D:).
Imaging really comes into its own when you enforce this
separation: If and when the OS fails, you simply restore the
previous OS image, without touching your data on drive D:.
You can't do this when your data is on drive C: . . .

See below for further answers.


Steve Jenkins said:
So,

I've got a server, server A that has two identical disks disk 1 & disk
2. I've been reading about disk mirroring, and have a few questions -
don't know if anyone can help:

- How slow are options like Norton Ghost and PowerQuest's Drive Image?
The machine has 2GHZ and 512 MB RAM, but the drives are 120GB.
Supposing 1 is full and 2 is totally empty and I'm copying from 1 to
2. Will it take days or just say 3-4 hours?
Click to expand...

Allow for about 1 minute per GByte.

- Will those packages include all the boot sectors, etc? Would I
actually want it to copy those things?
Click to expand...

These packages make a carbon copy of the source disk, warts and all.

- If disk1 failed, what would I actually _do_ to get the machine to
use disk2? What would I change and where?
Click to expand...

You rip out disk1, then make disk2 the primary master.
 
Good point. It comes back to planning ahead: If you know
the nature of the game then you split the disk in two BEFORE
you load the operating system. If you did not then you have to
use a third-party partition manager, such as PQMagic, to split
and resize your partitions.

If you don't want to spend the money on PQMagic then you
can do this:
- Borrow, buy or steal a hard disk of suitable size (the OP already
has one of these).
- Copy the original disk to the temporary disk, using DriveImage.
- Boot the machine with the temporary disk. Ensure that all works OK.
- Connect the normal disk as a slave.
- Partition the normal disk. 10 GBytes for the system partition
is plenty; in most cases, 5 GBtyes will do.
- Copy the data across to the normal disk. Make sure everything
is there.
- Delete the data from the temporary disk. This will slim it down
to less than 10 GBytes.
- Use DriveImage to restore the system partition on the normal
disk.
 
Thank you kind sir...
Good Answer.

(:op
don
:)
---


Good point. It comes back to planning ahead: If you know
the nature of the game then you split the disk in two BEFORE
you load the operating system. If you did not then you have to
use a third-party partition manager, such as PQMagic, to split
and resize your partitions.

If you don't want to spend the money on PQMagic then you
can do this:
- Borrow, buy or steal a hard disk of suitable size (the OP already
has one of these).
- Copy the original disk to the temporary disk, using DriveImage.
- Boot the machine with the temporary disk. Ensure that all works OK.
- Connect the normal disk as a slave.
- Partition the normal disk. 10 GBytes for the system partition
is plenty; in most cases, 5 GBtyes will do.
- Copy the data across to the normal disk. Make sure everything
is there.
- Delete the data from the temporary disk. This will slim it down
to less than 10 GBytes.
- Use DriveImage to restore the system partition on the normal
disk.
 
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