mirroring boot disk Windows 10

[emcci]

Hello,

I have a computer where I have several software tricky to install and activate, and some important data that I don't want to lose. All this data (windows, software and data) is in a 1TB SSD. I have bought 2 new SSD of the same model, one as spare and the other one with the intention of creating a raid 1.

I was searching for a software raid better than a motherboard/bios raid because I believe that the second one can be difficult to recover if the motherboard fails (maybe I'm wrong).

So I tried to create the software raid. The first problem is that I should copy the EFI partition in order to be able to boot from the second disk if the first fails. As I didn't know how to do it, I search a tutorial.

But I faced two problems following this tutorial.

• 
  - My source disk is a dynamic disk, and the tutorial is for basic disks. Dynamic disks have additional partitions that the tutorial do not explain how to copy on the destination disk.
  

• 
  - When copying the EFI files from the source to the destination disk, I couldn't copy two of them: EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD and BCD.log.

In front of these problems I tried to clone the source disk into the second one. Starting from a Linux live USB with the command "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb". But, unfortunately my Linux level is very low, and I launch the command without anything to check the status of the copy process. After a few hours, as the computer works also as web server I was in a hurry to put it online again. Trying to check the dd status to know if it was hung or working, I cancelled it unintentionally following the second answer of this thread.

Now, I stop here to ask you for help before make more mistakes and silly things. I don't want to spend another bunch of hours repeating the dd command, if it won't serve to create the mirror in windows 10 later.

Also, I have some doubts of the "add mirror" option of Windows 10. Will it notice me when one of the disks fails to replace it? Will it increase the reading speed?

Best Regards and thanks for your time,

Héctor Ingerto

 

[USAFRet]

Instead of a mirror or RAID 1, how about Images of the drive instead?

Automated, scheduled, easy to recover.
I use Macrium Reflect for this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

 

[emcci]

Instead of a mirror or RAID 1, how about Images of the drive instead?

Automated, scheduled, easy to recover.
I use Macrium Reflect for this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

Yes, it could be an option. But I thought that the mirror/raid 1 would give me more performance and faster error recovery, isn't?

Regards and thanks for your answer.

 

[USAFRet]

Instead of a mirror or RAID 1, how about Images of the drive instead?

Automated, scheduled, easy to recover.
I use Macrium Reflect for this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

Yes, it could be an option. But I thought that the mirror/raid 1 would give me more performance and faster error recovery, isn't?

Regards and thanks for your answer.

Not faster performance.
And if you had a RAID 1, you need an actual backup anyway.

If you can survive an hour or so downtime, full drive images are the way to go.
Done and scheduled correctly, you can have multi day granularity in when you want to recover from.

A virus corrupted your system yesterday? Fine...recover from 2 days earlier. A RAID 1 does not allow that.

 

[emcci]

Instead of a mirror or RAID 1, how about Images of the drive instead?

Automated, scheduled, easy to recover.
I use Macrium Reflect for this.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

Yes, it could be an option. But I thought that the mirror/raid 1 would give me more performance and faster error recovery, isn't?

Regards and thanks for your answer.

Not faster performance.
And if you had a RAID 1, you need an actual backup anyway.

If you can survive an hour or so downtime, full drive images are the way to go.
Done and scheduled correctly, you can have multi day granularity in when you want to recover from.

A virus corrupted your system yesterday? Fine...recover from 2 days earlier. A RAID 1 does not allow that.

Yes, you're right. I'm planning also a backup system behind the mirror.

I can be down for 1 hour but is better to not be down. Also, I receive data on real time from some devices. With a raid I think I could avoid or minimize data loss due to downtime or having to recover an image from 1 day ago, losing the data of the current day.

What I don't know is how to have multi day granularity. As far as I know, if I do a backup image of a disk of 1 TB, the image will weight 1 TB. Then, if tomorrow I do another one, I will have two images of 1TB each one. How do you do the incremental backup this way?

Best regards.

 

[USAFRet]

A RAID 1 is simply the same data on two physical drives. A mirror.
There is no "yesterday". It is all real time. The user and the OS sees a single copy. Delete something, and it is gone.

Sure, you can have a RAID 1. But that only helps in the case of a physical drive fail. It does nothing for the actual data.
This is what backups are for. A second (or 3rd/4th/whatever) copy, on some other media.

As far as the FUll and Incrementa images:
Today, you do a Full Image.
Tomorrow, you do an Incremental. Which is only the changes since the last image was created. Generally very small.
Next day, another Incremental. Again, only the changes since the last image.
Repeat repeat repeat.

My current C drive is a 500GB SSD.
Currently, about 200GB consumed space.
2 weeks of daily backups, Full and Incremental, consumes about 450GB space in my backup location.
I can literally recover that drive to the state it was on any day in the last 2 weeks.
A RAID 1 gives you..."now" and only now.


My link above refers to Macrium Reflect for doing this. All automated.
I don't have to touch it, until I need it.
Couple of weeks ago, one of my SSD's died. Sudden death, no warning at all.
1TB SanDisk secondary drive. 605GB consumed space.
Put in a new drive, took about 2 hours to recover the drive exactly as it was at 4AM that morning. This is reading that 600+GB across the LAN from my NAS box.
Or, I could have recovered it from 3 days earlier. Or a week earlier if needed.

Would having that be in a RAID 1 with an identical drive been 'faster'? Yes.
However, there are 6 individual SSD's in this system. Having each one of them in a RAID 1 would mean 12 physical drives. Complete waste of space, resources, and money.

 

[emcci]

Okey. I understand the importance of the backup. But I want to try also with the raid. I think they can be complementary solutions. How I can build the raid of the dynamic disk on W10?

On the other hand, how you recover the disk with the incremental images? If i have 1 full image and 10 incremental ones, and I have the last version I have to apply sequentially all the incremental images one by one? Or only the last one?

Best regards and thanks for your time.

 

[USAFRet]

Okey. I understand the importance of the backup. But I want to try also with the raid. I think they can be complementary solutions. How I can build the raid of the dynamic disk on W10?

On the other hand, how you recover the disk with the incremental images? If i have 1 full image and 10 incremental ones, and I have the last version I have to apply sequentially all the incremental images one by one? Or only the last one?

Best regards and thanks for your time.

With the Incremental images, the Macrium software does it automatically.
Select the Date, and it applies the relevant Full image and all the intervening Incrementals.
That's one of the shortcomings of Incrementals. You need all of them in between to make it work.

The other method is Differential images. A Full, and then all of the differences since the last Full image.
So you only need the previous Full image, and a single Differential.
This has the drawback of requiring more drive space.


https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW72/Differential+and+incremental+disk+images

 

[emcci]

Okey. Thanks for the information. It will helpful to me when I create the backup system. But, due to the use of the computer, the main risk is the disk failure, and I like the protection that the raid1 can give to me too. There is any advice to overcome the problems appeared doing the raid?

 

[USAFRet]

Okey. Thanks for the information. It will helpful to me when I create the backup system. But, due to the use of the computer, the main risk is the disk failure, and I like the protection that the raid1 can give to me too. There is any advice to overcome the problems appeared doing the raid?

Actually, I am 100% unsure how to go from your current Dynamic disk setup to a functioning RAID1, without completely starting over with a full reformat and reinstall.

 

[emcci]

If I start creating the backup first, then I could format and create a software mirror or a motherboard raid1, and have both: Daily incremental backup + raid. Wich one will be better in this case? Software raid or MB raid?

Best regards,

 

[USAFRet]

If I start creating the backup first, then I could format and create a software mirror or a motherboard raid1, and have both: Daily incremental backup + raid. Wich one will be better in this case? Software raid or MB raid?

Best regards,

You need to start the backup chain after it is running in a stable configuration.