Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Hard drive copy - Please help

[alain]

Well, this is my problem. A client of mine has a dedicated server with many valuable datas. He colocates on a NOC where it's impossible to backup hard drives. So I suggested him to put a second hard drive in his dedicated server. Do you know if there is any software which can copy (on the fly without rebooting the computer) the first hard drive to the second so that if the first hard drive burns he'd be able to ask his host to put the second one and restart the web server in few minutes ?

Please help ! Okay, I know that if his NOC burns the second hard drive will be useless

[dektong]

You might want to have at least RAID 1 solution. The way RAID 1 works is that it will write any bit of your data to two different HDs (called mirroring). That way when the first HD crashes, you should not worry much (Except down time) since you have all of your data on the other drive.

But the thing, is the dedicated server RAID capable? If not, then yes ... you can just add a second HD and use cron job (every hour, every day, whatever you choose) to tar/zip or even just mere copy of your valuable data on the main HD to the second HD. In the event when your main HD crashes, all you need to do is to replace your main HD, reinstall the OS, and copy your valuable data from your other HD back to this main HD ...

Off-site backup is another solutions ... On-site backup to the NOC's tape backup is yet another solution ....

But anyway, I don't think the downtime would be in minutes region, unless it it is RAID

cheers,

[alain]

No RAID. I'm under Win2K. Any idea of a software that can replicate my first IDE drive to a second one ?

[WeinBar Jack]

RAID works under Win2k

[alain]

My hard drives are IDE, no RAID card.

[TheRazor]

I am in the middle of a w2k server cert class. We just went over this, and if I am not mistaken software based raid is built into w2k server. I will check it out...

[dektong]

Yes, I believe so ... but without any additional hardware? I thought you would still need a RAID controller like Promise RAID or something ...?

cheers,

[TheRazor]

You don't need the hardware it just won't be as reliable.

[Jm4n]

I thought you would still need a RAID controller...

No, that's why it's called Software RAID I didn't know Windows supported this, but I've seen many Linux software RAID setups using just an on-board IDE controller an a couple of identical IDE drives... not as reliable, but it does the job. I'm sure the Windows implementation would be similar.