Newb Secondary Storage Drive Arrangement, need help

[Bozhark]

HI there folks,

I'm looking for suggestions regarding my storage drive arrangement. Right now I have 2 Samsung 850 EVO 500GB Drives in my desktop. I use one as my main, but my secondary hasn't been touched. Do I need to install windows OS to the secondary drive if I want to use it as a back/restore drive? I want to automate nightly writes to the back up, I'm assuming installing windows OS and using the default utilities would be my best route. Any other suggestions?

 

[ESPclipse]

If you are wanting to use the second drive as backup, then you can format it to NTFS then use your preferred backup software to back up your system drive to that second drive. You do not need to install an operating system to a drive that you do not plan on running an operating system from, so that's not even an option in your case. If you are looking to make that second drive an exact redundant copy of your system drive, one that stores exactly what's on the system drive at all times, then you may prefer establishing a RAID1 array between the drives

 

[boosted1g]

No you do not need to install windows to the second drive, you don't need two versions of the OS on your PC.

To see the drive in My Computer you need to go into disk management, right click on the second drive, select New Simple Volume and create a new partition. You may also need to assign it a drive letter.

Then you can setup your backups.
I use a mix of file backups and full disk image.
I use syncback to backup my user files once a week, and macrium refelect to do a full disk image every month (naturally you can schedule it to the interval of your choosing).
Syncback is free, but the $35 SE version gives you much more fine tuning and the best feature it has for general use is file versioning; with versioning it will save previous versions of the file in case of accidental deletion, corruption, or modification.

RAID 1 is nice for redundancy but it is not a backup solution. With raid 1, if windows updates and completely corrupts itself, then with RAID 1 all you have is a perfect copy of the same corrupted windows os.

 

[Bozhark]

Thank you for your input!

 

[Bozhark]

boosted1g; what would you do if the secondary drive does not appear in windows disk management? I know the drive is on and working from the samsung disk utility, but it won't show up in disk management.

 

[Bozhark]

Found solution. I needed to initialize disk first, then follow your instructions. Works!