Backing up a hardrive

[coops]

I am at the midway point of ripping 1200 cd's to an external hardrive. When done, I etimate I will have used about 200 gbs.
When done, I would like to copy this drive to another external drive and put it away as a backup. Is it possible to connect two drives and direct copy? Or do I need to go from one external drive to the pc and back out to the other external drive?
Thanks

[mherger]

> When done, I would like to copy this drive to another external drive
> and put it away as a backup. Is it possible to connect two drives and
> direct copy? Or do I need to go from one external drive to the pc and
> back out to the other external drive?

This depends on the drive. But generally I'd say a direct connection won't
be faster than connecting both to the PC.

--

Michael

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[Khuli]

If your motherboard supports Raid, then I'd use it, as you get a real-time backup and no down-time if a disk fails.

[Jon]

If your motherboard supports Raid, then I'd use it, as you get a real-time backup and no down-time if a disk fails.
But then you are susceptible to operating system/RAID glitches, user errors, and other system-level hiccups ... even with RAID, I'd want some sort of backup that is separate from your primary data disk(s).

[notanatheist]

Add virii to the list. Heck, anything can take out your data unwillingly. McCrappy just had an issue where their software was deleting people's documents! That's why I don't do anything productive on my computers. As for external hard drives, yes you can go drive to drive. Windows just assigns them a drive letter. If you're on 2000 or XP open up a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD) and type "xcopy (space) Drive_letter:\ (space) Drive_letter:\ (space) /s/c/h/i" and watch the magic happen. The store a drive offsite if you have the option. Alternatively, Acronis TrueImage does a great job cloning and works great with USB drives.

[Khuli]

....or use some backup software...

I use FolderClone http://www.folderclone.com/ to automatically copy any new music I add, overnight.

[gusi]

I use two internal drives for my music. As a backup I have two extra drives and a usb external case. I use the OS to copy from one disk to another.

As one disk is full and unchanging I don't need to update its backup. The half full disk is backed up occasionally after heavy ripping. (still got a few hunderd to go.)

Pro
backups are easy
no need to set up a raid array
disconnected drives are lightning proof

Con
It will take 10 minutes to swap the drives if one should fail.

I see my biggest risk as disk failure, lightning, burglary. To protect against fire I'd need to store them at a friends place, which would hugely increase the swap over time.

cheers
Gus

[Khuli]

I see my biggest risk as disk failure, lightning, burglary. To protect against fire I'd need to store them at a friends place, which would hugely increase the swap over time.


Got a friend who lives nearby? Mine are backup up nightly on a wireless link to a friend's server, who lives about 100 metres away.

[gusi]

Good idea but all my friends are outside wifi range :-(

If lightning strikes in your neighbourhood you could still end up with two fried disks. I'd prefer to keep mine off line. I don't rip all that often so I don't need to update the backup very often either.

Gus