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sofasurfer
Guest
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 Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 6:02 am Post subject: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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I want 2 hard drives in my pc. I want 1 as my OS and the other as a
backup. As things are now, when I want to copy my OS to the backup, I
need to open the case and reconnect the backup drive. Then after
backup I need to disconnect the backup drive.
They tell me I can't leave both connected because the computer will
see to identicle drives with the same OS's on them.
But, I have ran successfully with both drives connected. I also have
simply disabled the backup in the BIOS and ran successfully.
So, whats the truth about whether the backup needs to be disconnected?
Also, if I do choose to disconnect one drive, is it adequete to just
disable it in BIOS? Or, do I need to disconnect both the power plug
AND the ide cable? |
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Thomas Wendell
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 6:08 am Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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sofasurfer wrote:
| Quote: | I want 2 hard drives in my pc. I want 1 as my OS and the other as a
backup. As things are now, when I want to copy my OS to the backup, I
need to open the case and reconnect the backup drive. Then after
backup I need to disconnect the backup drive.
They tell me I can't leave both connected because the computer will
see to identicle drives with the same OS's on them.
But, I have ran successfully with both drives connected. I also have
simply disabled the backup in the BIOS and ran successfully.
So, whats the truth about whether the backup needs to be disconnected?
Also, if I do choose to disconnect one drive, is it adequete to just
disable it in BIOS? Or, do I need to disconnect both the power plug
AND the ide cable?
|
The idea of disconnecting it physically, ie. power and IDE cables, is to
prevent an power surge through the computer to fry both the primary and
backup HD.
I'd put the backup disk in something like these
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=92&name=External-Enclosures
or these
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=43&name=Hard-Drive-Accessories
--
Tumppi
=================================
A lot learned from these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
================================= |
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DaveW
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:00 am Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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You are obviously using a jerry-rigged system of backup. What you should
use is a RAID 1 array so you have two mirrored drives, so if one fails the
other will run with the exact same data and OS.
--
DaveW
----------------
"sofasurfer" <sofasurfer@blclinks.net> wrote in message
news:1171070837.082388.85300@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | I want 2 hard drives in my pc. I want 1 as my OS and the other as a
backup. As things are now, when I want to copy my OS to the backup, I
need to open the case and reconnect the backup drive. Then after
backup I need to disconnect the backup drive.
They tell me I can't leave both connected because the computer will
see to identicle drives with the same OS's on them.
But, I have ran successfully with both drives connected. I also have
simply disabled the backup in the BIOS and ran successfully.
So, whats the truth about whether the backup needs to be disconnected?
Also, if I do choose to disconnect one drive, is it adequete to just
disable it in BIOS? Or, do I need to disconnect both the power plug
AND the ide cable?
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kony
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:47 am Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:00:12 -0800, "DaveW"
<somewhere@zero.org> wrote:
| Quote: | You are obviously using a jerry-rigged system of backup. What you should
use is a RAID 1 array so you have two mirrored drives, so if one fails the
other will run with the exact same data and OS.
|
.... which wouldn't actually be a backup, and wouldn't guard
against many types of windows faults. |
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kony
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:03 am Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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On 9 Feb 2007 17:27:17 -0800, "sofasurfer"
<sofasurfer@blclinks.net> wrote:
| Quote: | I want 2 hard drives in my pc. I want 1 as my OS and the other as a
backup. As things are now, when I want to copy my OS to the backup, I
need to open the case and reconnect the backup drive. Then after
backup I need to disconnect the backup drive.
|
If your system can boot an external drive it might be easier
to do this instead of having to perpetually open case and
disconnect the backup drive.
| Quote: |
They tell me I can't leave both connected because the computer will
see to identicle drives with the same OS's on them.
|
Not necessarily a problem, the system will boot the original
drive/OS fine as selected in your bios.
However, if you were to then boot the second drive windows
has already assigned it a different drive letter and may
stop during boot, trying to access the other drive. IF the
other drive is available it would use it in that case but
whether that is sufficient depends on why you're trying to
boot / run the backup at that point.
Another alternative is to use remote registry to connect to
the backup HDD, OS installation when it gets stuck and
manually swap the drive letters around in the
HKey-Local_Machine-Mounted_Devices registry subkey. In that
key you would see your original drive assigned a letter "C"
if your windows installation is typical, I mean an entry for
"\DosDevices\C:" corresponding to the device ID assigned to
the original drive, and there would be another
\DosDevices\%: entry with the % corresponding to the drive
letter windows had assigned to the backup drive.
You'd then rename the \DosDevices\C: temporarily so you're
not trying to have two entries with the same name, for
example rename it to \DosDevices\Z:, then name the new drive
that was \DosDevices\%: to \DosDevices\C:, then rename
\DosDevices\Z: to the original name for \DosDevices\%:
It will make more sense looking at the keys than reading
about it here, once you realize that windows is considering
"C" to be the drive windows is installed to, but that
windows is considering the backup drive to be a different
letter permanently if it was already detected by Windows, so
all you're doing is telling windows to reassign "C" to the
new drive so it looks to that drive for all the OS related
files.
Naturally if you don't have Remote Registry Service enabled,
or don't have another Win2k/XP box on the lan, you can't use
Remote Registry editing to do it.
| Quote: |
But, I have ran successfully with both drives connected. I also have
simply disabled the backup in the BIOS and ran successfully.
|
Ok, but how about disabling the original drive and
successfully booting and running OS from the backup?
If you can do that already, you're done... except in certain
cases of backup where you want to prevent something like a
Virus from trying (actually doing) to infect the backup as
well, but it would be a limited window of opportunity if the
second drive is always disconnected.
As with the above remote registry example, if you would
never have both drives visible in windows you could
pre-emptively delete the \DosDevices\ entry corresponding to
the backup drive, then when booting it with the original
drive disconnected windows should be able to assign it to C:
immediately, but whatever scheme you want to use you should
confirm it working before relying on it as a backup and
recovery strategy.
| Quote: |
So, whats the truth about whether the backup needs to be disconnected?
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It doesn't need disconnected for the reason you mentioned,
the original drive/OS can run just fine with it connected.
| Quote: |
Also, if I do choose to disconnect one drive, is it adequete to just
disable it in BIOS? Or, do I need to disconnect both the power plug
AND the ide cable?
|
You can't just disable it in the bios, unplug at least the
power cable... some controllers can run fine with an
unpowered device alone on it's own channel but if yours
can't, unplug the data cable too. |
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Rod Speed
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 8:31 am Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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DaveW <somewhere@zero.org> wrote:
| Quote: | You are obviously using a jerry-rigged system of backup. What you should use is a RAID 1 array so
you have two mirrored drives, so if one fails the other will run with the exact same data and OS.
|
Completely useless when the problem that you need the backup for is
a virus, update or install that *** the system, user stupidity, etc etc etc.
| Quote: | sofasurfer <sofasurfer@blclinks.net> wrote
I want 2 hard drives in my pc. I want 1 as my OS and the other as a
backup. As things are now, when I want to copy my OS to the backup, I
need to open the case and reconnect the backup drive. Then after
backup I need to disconnect the backup drive.
They tell me I can't leave both connected because the computer will
see to identicle drives with the same OS's on them.
But, I have ran successfully with both drives connected. I also have
simply disabled the backup in the BIOS and ran successfully.
So, whats the truth about whether the backup needs to be
disconnected? Also, if I do choose to disconnect one drive, is it adequete to just
disable it in BIOS? Or, do I need to disconnect both the power plug
AND the ide cable? |
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Ed Medlin
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 9:56 pm Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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"Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:53a1shF1rutkaU1@mid.individual.net...
| Quote: | DaveW <somewhere@zero.org> wrote:
You are obviously using a jerry-rigged system of backup. What you should
use is a RAID 1 array so you have two mirrored drives, so if one fails
the other will run with the exact same data and OS.
Completely useless when the problem that you need the backup for is
a virus, update or install that *** the system, user stupidity, etc etc
etc.
|
Almost everytime I have had to restore from my backup has been something I
have done, and I have been working on these things forever. Yep.....user
stupidity is probably the most common reason for screwing up a system. I use
'off system' backups. I backup over network about every couple of weeks and
use a USB2 external drive for daily (or whenever I need to store important
files) backups. Works for me. If you tinker a lot, you need to get the
backup off the system.
Ed |
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Rod Speed
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:45 pm Post subject: Re: Whats required to detect or not detect a hard drive? |
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Ed Medlin <ed@edmedlin.com> wrote
| Quote: | Rod Speed <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote
DaveW <somewhere@zero.org> wrote
You are obviously using a jerry-rigged system of backup. What you should use is a RAID 1 array
so you have two mirrored drives, so if one fails the other will run with the exact same data and
OS.
Completely useless when the problem that you need the backup for is
a virus, update or install that *** the system, user stupidity, etc etc etc.
Almost everytime I have had to restore from my backup has been something I have done, and I have
been working on these things forever.
|
The time you need the real backup as opposed to a mirror is just those almosts.
Yes, system restore does almost always work fine, but not always.
| Quote: | Yep.....user stupidity is probably the most common reason for screwing up a system. I use 'off
system' backups. I backup over network about every couple of weeks and use a USB2 external drive
for daily (or whenever I need to store important files) backups.
|
I also have the stuff I'll slash my wrists if I lose on DVD offsite,
covers theft of all the systems, fire etc. Flood cant happen here.
| Quote: | Works for me. If you tinker a lot, you need to get the backup off the system.
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And even if you dont, a mirror provides no protection at all against those I listed.
Its only real advantage is that is always up to date and recovery is faster. |
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