Proper cloning sequence
I have my OS and data on 3 partitions on a RAID 10 drive array; one of the drives in the array is telling me that it is missing. I suspect a bad connection. If not I want to initalize the bad drive and attempt to clone it to a seperate physical drive. I am familiar with the cloning process.
Assume putting the image on the seperate hard drive has been completed.
When I find out and fix the problem, do I clone the seperate disc back to the original drive in the same manner as I cloned it to the seperate drive? If not, I would appreciate any suggestions available.
Thanks,
Barry
Agree with Enchantec. Restoring or cloning a drive in a RAID array is not want you want to do. The RAID controller keeps track of the parity and mirroring an restoring a clone in RAID is not going to give you the results you want. If the failed drive in the array is not physically bad, you can format it and the RAID controller should automatically rebuild the parity on the drive again. Otherwise, if the physical disk is bad, you should replace it with a new one and still let the RAID controller rebuild the parity on the new drive.
Cloning/restoring is only meant for full OS restore to the entire RAID array, not for repairing degraded RAID status of a single disk.
Thanks to those that answered my post. I may have mis-stated my question. I want a cloned copy to use if the OS gets corrupted or totally wiped out. I am sure that we all have our registry settings,special settings, plug-ins etc.I have been thru enough OS corruptions for reasons of my experimenting, or power surges, even with a UPS. I live in the St. Louis, Missouri area and if you watch the news, you know that we experience severe weather(like now) and have wicked power surges or outages.
This machine, like many others out there has a fair amount of User ID's and passwords, all of which get dumped or corrupted. When I lose the OS, I have to reload everything from scratch, which is a 2 - 3 day process (without interruptions). With a cloned copy, I could just clone the clone (in NovaBack but Acronis is far superior and that is what I now use). It's a learning curve issue.
To reteriate, if my C:\ drive gets wiped or corrupted, what is the easiest and fastest way to restore it? I am open to suggestions.
Thanks,
Barry
YOu need to create a disk backup of the RAID10. If you end up having a system issue, you would restore that image to the RAID-configured set of disks (could be another type of RAID).
What is really important is for you to produce the Acronis recovery medium, boot the computer on it, and try to restore a couple of files from your backup. The recovery medium runs Acronis True Image outside of windows, but you need to make sure it sees your disks as a single volume. If it sees 3 separate disks, you wlll need to use the WinPE-based version of the recovery medium and go throug the same verification.
To further refine my question, suppose that I have cloned the OS to a seperate drive for termporary backup, have done what I wanted to do, and now wish to transfer the OS back to where it came from.
I can do a straight copy or do I have to clone it back over for restoration?
Thanks,
Barry
Barry, if you forget about using the term 'clone' and just create a full backup image of your OS drive to a separate drive as a backup (temporary or otherwise), then you can restore that back at any time that you may need to do so. That is a key aspect of what ATIH is able to do in terms of backup and restore / recovery.
As Pat has already stated above, the real important issue with doing any backup and recovery is to both create and test the Acronis Rescue Media (bootable DVD or USB memory stick) to ensure that it sees your drives correctly to allow any future recovery to succeed. This is not something you want to find doesn't work when you have a real emergency situation.
Thanks -
I use "clone" and "image" interchangeability since leaving NOVABack for years, perhaps incorrectly. BTW, isn't a full image backup a clone of what you are fully backing up? Just asking.
"This is not something you want to find doesn't work when you have a real emergency situation." Been in that movie before!
I have used the Acronis Rescue Media several times with complete success, even for using an application on a different application. The only exception is my NAS. They just released new SW for it, but I have not had the time to get into it. I filled out the questionaire about do I use a NAS so I assume that Acrinis is working on that part of the application.
Thanks again,
Barry
Barry, the end result of a backup image and a clone operation would hopefully be the same in the context of this conversation, however, in practice cloning is a direct copy between the source and target drives with no intermediate step inbetween, whereas with a backup image, you are creating a compressed storage file format (.TIB) that holds a copy of the source drive / partition / files or folders and this can be copied, moved, explored, mounted or restored / recovered to the same or a different target drive in full or in part.
Some people prefer to use the backup image and restore process because of having the image file to fall back upon in the event of any problems, plus because there is then no risk of anything happening to the source drive during the duplication process. There have been reports where an error in the clone process has rendered the source drive unbootable.
Steve -
Thanks. I learned something today.
Barry