From: Michael Geary (Mike_at_Geary.com)
Date: Sat Oct 14 2000 - 14:07:31 EDT
> What are the pluses and minuses of the following proposed approach?
>
> I would like to have 2 identical hard drives for the Thinkpad. In
> some manner I would like to cable the 2 hard drives together,
> perhaps connected to or hosted by my desktop, and then clone
> exactly the one hard drive to the other. In this manner, if
> ANYTHING happens to the primary hard drive, one merely slaps in the
> backup HD.
>
> One of the local computer shops did this for me using a rather
> expensive machine to "dup" the one HD to the other - 12gb in 30
> minutes or so.
James explained the hardware you need--the $29 second HDD adapter--and with
a copy of Ghost you've got your own magic duplicating machine. (Ghost is
several times faster than the various PowerQuest products such as Drive
Copy--Ghost will copy your drive in 30-45 minutes, where the PowerQuest
stuff will take at least a couple hours.)
But listen up: You need at least THREE identical hard drives to do this
cloning backup safely. With two drives, what's the first thing that happens
when you start a backup running? The drive copy program ERASES YOUR OLD
BACKUP. So during that period while you're running the backup operation, you
have NO BACKUP.
By using three drives, you can alternate back and forth between them,
backing up onto the older of the two, so you always have your most recent
backup even while you're making a new backup.
-Mike
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