I searched for "back up" and found several responses, none that could answer my question exactly. I'm wondering what would be the best way to back up 2x 1.5 TB Drives from both software and mechanical failure on each drive.

Would it be easiest to buy an external hdd and run a backup program to monitor both disks at the same time? I'm really over my head here, even after using google.

7/12/2009 10:36:29 AM

what kind of computer is it? Self-built?
you could add a RAID card and set up a RAID 5 array with only one additional disk of the same size as the other two. With a 3x 1.5TB RAID 5 array, your overall capacity would be 3TB, but both of your main drives would effectively be backed up from any single HDD physical failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_5#RAID_5

What kind of "software failure" are you trying to protect against? Like virus corruption or something? RAID would not protect against that, since it doesn't actually perform backups to a dedicated backup drive - all 3 drives are used in real-time, and if you get massive virus corruption or something, I suppose it could kill the data on all 3 drives (but is that a real concern for you?)

7/12/2009 11:43:06 AM

Thanks!

Does adding that 3rd drive mean I have to reformat my other drives to start the whole process? Or, can I keep using the drives as they are and configure the raid5?

7/12/2009 11:55:42 AM

yes, unfortunately both drives would have to be wiped clean and the data would have to be put back onto the drives after the RAID is set up

[Edited on July 12, 2009 at 12:02 PM. Reason : .]

7/12/2009 12:01:32 PM

Any other options?

7/12/2009 12:16:39 PM

what kind of computer and OS?

7/12/2009 12:22:11 PM

buy external drive from walmart for $60
copy everything to external drive
put in 3rd internal drive and do all that shit
copy everything back to new RAID setup
return drive back to walmart for full refund
..
profit

7/12/2009 2:02:40 PM

I'm inferring you have 1.5TB of unique content of on each drive. you would need a 3TB disk to back up both of these 1.5TB volumes on the same disk. just get 2 more 1.5TB disks and setup ntbackup

7/12/2009 2:18:47 PM

I have a custom built computer. Windows 7 RC 64bit. Around 2.5 TB of unique content. I really don't want to (read: won't) go out and buy 2x 1.5TB Drives to back this up. My primary concern is mechanical failure.

If worse comes to worse, I'll buy an external 1TB drive and manually back up the most important data.

7/12/2009 5:00:41 PM

if you arent willing to spend 200 dollars in hard drives for backup, obviously the data isn't very valuable to you in the first place.

just backup critical files online or to dvd/flash/external drive, and be done with it.

7/12/2009 5:28:12 PM

I'm quickly discovering that that is my only option.

7/13/2009 1:29:35 AM