Back Up A Secific Drive

[dual290x]

Fellow techies,

I am looking at setting up a small raid and I will be using a LSI Raid Card (I feel better using hardware raid than software raid..... just how I am). I am unsure about how I can backup certain drives. The main thing is, I will have two drives one for my Win 7 (two partitions for two users and one program/universal data partition) and the other drive as my game drive for Win 10. How can I back up those two specific drives? Does the LSI software handle that? Thanks in advance.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Backup the physical drive or the partition.

 

You can't backup the physical drive, nor would you want to. Use a file synce utility to backup the files in a partition

 

What computer and raid card? What OS. Id suggest software raid. Its better at protecting your data, and can mirgrate easier.

[techmattr]

https://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html

[tt2468]

On 2/2/2017 at 6:43 PM, techmattr said:

https://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html

No explanation to what the link leads to and what it does?

 

Like @Electronics Wizardy said (second reference lol), you would be better off using software raid. But, if you choose to ignore our advise, that's on you. And also like he said, physically backing up a drive is not at all common. Just use an external HDD for backups. Even better would be to run a mirror, so a failed drive doesn't do anything to your data.

[dalekphalm]

51 minutes ago, dual290x said:

Fellow techies,

I am looking at setting up a small raid and I will be using a LSI Raid Card (I feel better using hardware raid than software raid..... just how I am). I am unsure about how I can backup certain drives. The main thing is, I will have two drives one for my Win 7 (two partitions for two users and one program/universal data partition) and the other drive as my game drive for Win 10. How can I back up those two specific drives? Does the LSI software handle that? Thanks in advance.

You're confusing two things:

RAID and Backups are different things.

 

RAID will take multiple drives and combine them into an array. The specifics depend on the type of RAID array you choose.

 

Here's a basic overview (It excludes several types of RAID though):

Here's another one that covers the other types:

 

 

So anyway, let's assume you're talking about RAID1, which mirrors two drives. You can RAID your OS drive, and/or your "Games" drive. However, you need 2 HDD's (or SSD's) for each "drive" you want to RAID. The OS treats each "RAID" array as a single drive, which you can partition any way you want.

 

So for example, you could do the following:

2x 128GB SSD's in RAID1, plus

2x 1TB HDD's in RAID1

 

The OS would simply see a 128GB "drive" and a 1TB "drive".

 

This does not make backups of files, prevent against accidental file deletion, file corruption, or malware/virus infection.

 

RAID is mostly designed for uptime and redundancy. So basically, a HDD dies, you swap in a replacement and continue running. In the background, the RAID card will restore the RAID array while you can still use it (with reduced performance usually).

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, tt2468 said:

No explanation to what the link leads to and what it does?

 

Like @Electronics Wizardy said (second reference lol), you would be better off using software raid. But, if you choose to ignore our advise, that's on you. And also like he said, physically backing up a drive is not at all common. Just use an external HDD for backups. Even better would be to run a mirror, so a failed drive doesn't do anything to your data.

Veeam is a backup software. Quite popular in the Enterprise circles.

[dual290x]

 

 

28 minutes ago, tt2468 said:

No explanation to what the link leads to and what it does?

 

Like @Electronics Wizardy said (second reference lol), you would be better off using software raid. But, if you choose to ignore our advise, that's on you. And also like he said, physically backing up a drive is not at all common. Just use an external HDD for backups. Even better would be to run a mirror, so a failed drive doesn't do anything to your data.

I looked at the link for Veeam and it seems interesting. I will look more into it.

 

How is software raid better (no disrespect)? I had always understood that hardware raid was a little more safe. If your card dies then you can get the same one, on say ebay. I would install a battery on the card and so if a malfunction happens (bsod, random restart, random laughing flaming head before a shutdown) then the data that is in cache won't be lost and it can finish up what data it has and you can pickup where you left off. Where with software raid, if you have a malfunction, the cache is lost,or you lose your OS or your motherboard dies then you are S.O.L. That has been my understanding. If I have this wrong please let me know.

 

Raid 1 is a possibility... I will take that into consideration for the Win 7 drive(some programs, files, user data, etc. OS is on a SSD). The game drive however... I am not quite sure how that would go. Your thoughts?

23 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

You're confusing two things:

RAID and Backups are different things.

 

RAID will take multiple drives and combine them into an array. The specifics depend on the type of RAID array you choose.

Video

Here's a basic overview (It excludes several types of RAID though):

Video

Here's another one that covers the other types:

So anyway, let's assume you're talking about RAID1, which mirrors two drives. You can RAID your OS drive, and/or your "Games" drive. However, you need 2 HDD's (or SSD's) for each "drive" you want to RAID. The OS treats each "RAID" array as a single drive, which you can partition any way you want.

 

So for example, you could do the following:

2x 128GB SSD's in RAID1, plus

2x 1TB HDD's in RAID1

 

The OS would simply see a 128GB "drive" and a 1TB "drive".

 

This does not make backups of files, prevent against accidental file deletion, file corruption, or malware/virus infection.

 

RAID is mostly designed for uptime and redundancy. So basically, a HDD dies, you swap in a replacement and continue running. In the background, the RAID card will restore the RAID array while you can still use it (with reduced performance usually).

 

I am quite aware that raid and backups are considered two different entities. I will have the raid array, a nas and an online backup service running.

The raid array will be for immediate recovery, the nas will be the semi long term data holder, and the online solution will be the long term data holder/the east coast will be a nuclear wasteland in two hours, so THANK YOU GOD my data is in Nevada, kind of solution.

 

I just realized I misspelled "Specific" in the title..... facepalm.

 

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, dual290x said:

 

 

I looked at the link for Veeam and it seems interesting. I will look more into it.

 

How is software raid better (no disrespect)? I had always understood that hardware raid was a little more safe. If your card dies then you can get the same one, on say ebay. I would install a battery on the card and so if a malfunction happens (bsod, random restart, random laughing flaming head before a shutdown) then the data that is in cache won't be lost and it can finish up what data it has and you can pickup where you left off. Where with software raid, if you have a malfunction, the cache is lost,or you lose your OS or your motherboard dies then you are S.O.L. That has been my understanding. If I have this wrong please let me know.

 

Raid 1 is a possibility... I will take that into consideration for the Win 7 drive(some programs, files, user data, etc. OS is on a SSD). The game drive however... I am not quite sure how that would go. Your thoughts?

 

I am quite aware that raid and backups are considered two different entities. I have been reading about raid and watching videos (including the ones you posted) for a while now, I will have the raid array, a nas and an online backup service running.

 

The raid array will be for immediate recovery, the nas will be the semi long term data holder, and the online solution will be the long term data holder/the east coast will be a nuclear wasteland in two hours, so THANK YOU GOD my data is in Nevada, kind of solution.

 

I just realized I misspelled "Specific" in the title..... facepalm.

 

I'm glad you did some research, but your opening post indicated some confusion, eg: thinking the "LSI software" would be involved in the backup process. The RAID card, and any LSI software, have nothing to do with backing anything up. You don't even need any LSI software to run the RAID card. Drivers should be picked up automatically in Windows (though it's possible you may need to manually install drivers). There is a management application, called MegaRAID, which allows you to do configuration and see status reports of the RAID array(s).

 

Anyway, what you need is a backup software. You could use the built-in Windows based backup software, which allows you to backup to a network drive, assuming it's mapped to a drive letter. The built-in backup is decent, and simple, but not amazing.

 

As noted above, Veeam is very popular. So is Acronis. There are tons of backup software to choose from, so I'd recommend doing some research, and checking reviews and roundups/comparisons, etc.

[dual290x]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

I'm glad you did some research, but your opening post indicated some confusion, eg: thinking the "LSI software" would be involved in the backup process. The RAID card, and any LSI software, have nothing to do with backing anything up. You don't even need any LSI software to run the RAID card. Drivers should be picked up automatically in Windows (though it's possible you may need to manually install drivers). There is a management application, called MegaRAID, which allows you to do configuration and see status reports of the RAID array(s).

 

Anyway, what you need is a backup software. You could use the built-in Windows based backup software, which allows you to backup to a network drive, assuming it's mapped to a drive letter. The built-in backup is decent, and simple, but not amazing.

 

As noted above, Veeam is very popular. So is Acronis. There are tons of backup software to choose from, so I'd recommend doing some research, and checking reviews and roundups/comparisons, etc.

I apologize for the confusion. When I was researching an LSI card I saw something about LSI software or boot-up utility or something, either way I had to stop and run to class and I never got back to the video so that is why I assumed and said without thought "software".

 

I am sure you know the "meaning" of assume. 

 

Ok, thank you. I will look at those bits of software, thank you. I will come back sometime tomorrow once I have done some more homework. PEACE!

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, dual290x said:

I apologize for the confusion. When I was researching an LSI card I saw something about LSI software or boot-up utility or something, either way I had to stop and run to class and I never got back to the video so that is why I assumed and said without thought "software".

 

I am sure you know the "meaning" of assume. 

 

Ok, thank you. I will look at those bits of software, thank you. I will come back sometime tomorrow once I have done some more homework. PEACE!

The "boot-up" utility thing you came across is the GUI for the firmware. Essentially, during boot, you'll see a special key-combination show up on the screen (something like "CTRL+C"). Pressing those keys when it says so during boot, will launch the configuration utility, which will likely look "DOS-like". This gives you direct access to the RAID card, which allows you to configure settings, create arrays, manage disks, etc.

 

Booting into Windows, and using the MegaRAID application will give you access to many of the same features/functions, but generally not everything. You can do most of what you'll need to do in either, so it's pretty much whatever works better for you.

 

No problem! You can often find pretty comprehensive "roundup" comparisons by fairly reputable websites. Let us know which backup software has caught your eye, and we can give you our opinions on them.

[dual290x]

I am back, for now. I have looked a little into Veeam, but one thing seems to be a common denominator... they are all boot drives. The drives I will be backing up are drives that hold excel files, word docs, music, pictures, videos, some GB eating applications, etc. The boot drives are ssds and they have most of the major applications. I will clone the two ssds to hdds and keep them for a rainy day. 

 

I just wanted to make sure that was clear. 

 

 

Maybe just a RAID 1 for the Win 7 files and app hdd. For the Win 10 game holding hhd I am not sure about the write speed of RAID 1. Any thoughts are welcomed. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

21 hours ago, dual290x said:

How is software raid better (no disrespect)? I had always understood that hardware raid was a little more safe. If your card dies then you can get the same one, on say ebay. I would install a battery on the card and so if a malfunction happens (bsod, random restart, random laughing flaming head before a shutdown)

Software raid can have checksums to keep the data from being corrupeted(on zfs, refs, btrfs, and apfs and others), hardware raid can't as it can't see the data. Software raid also can rebuilt much faster as it knows where the data is and doesn't have to rebuild empty space. You can also have snapshots built into the filsystem, and its one thing to manage that has more control, compared to having a raid layer, a logical volume layer for snapshots, and a filesystem.

 

For recovery you don't need the os, any system can recover it just fine, and there are often more recovery tools(but you have backups so this don't matter)

 

Battery only helps if the power goes out. The battery keeps the ram cache on the card powered, so if you turn it on again in the next day, it will empty the cache and finish the write. The raid card has no idea if there a blue screen crashes. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, dual290x said:

Maybe just a RAID 1 for the Win 7 files and app hdd. For the Win 10 game holding hhd I am not sure about the write speed of RAID 1. Any thoughts are welcomed. 

Don't use raid here, just keep backups. Raid 1 should only really be used when a device is mission critical. Raid won't help if you delete a file, get randsomware, get a evil user, or the files get corrupted from the os. It also adds more complexity to the system.

 

write speed on raid 1 is the same as a single drive. Don't use raid 1 for speed, only use it for mission critical devices

[dual290x]

20 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Software raid can have checksums to keep the data from being corrupeted(on zfs, refs, btrfs, and apfs and others), hardware raid can't as it can't see the data. Software raid also can rebuilt much faster as it knows where the data is and doesn't have to rebuild empty space. You can also have snapshots built into the filsystem, and its one thing to manage that has more control, compared to having a raid layer, a logical volume layer for snapshots, and a filesystem.

 

For recovery you don't need the os, any system can recover it just fine, and there are often more recovery tools(but you have backups so this don't matter)

 

Battery only helps if the power goes out. The battery keeps the ram cache on the card powered, so if you turn it on again in the next day, it will empty the cache and finish the write. The raid card has no idea if there a blue screen crashes. 

Interesting. Everything I have read and listened to doesn't go into as much detail as you just did.

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

write speed on raid 1 is the same as a single drive. Don't use raid 1 for speed, only use it for mission critical devices

I wasn't as worried about whether or not it would be faster,  I was worried about it being slower. I had read and heard that raid 1 was a bit slower at writing because it had to write everything to the two or more drives. Noted though, thanks.

[dual290x]

I know what I am going to do. Why it took me this long to figure it out I have no clue, I guess I like to make things complicated.

 

I will run a raid 0 of two disks in my pc to hold images of the drives. I will then have a password protected nas that will run in raid 1 to hold images, then have the online storage solutions (offsite) hold images. The raid 0 will have the latest images, the nas will hold the two latest, and the online storage will hold however many I see fit. Not too complicated. I will have two hard drives in a fireproof safe (meant for media) that will hold clones of the boot drives. This will give me extra protection and less downtime.

 

If something should be added or maybe more detailed let me know. I think this is a good idea.