Mirror drives

You certainly do not break mirror every time you install something. In fact once you set up mirror you don't do anything but monitor the state of the mirror. All synchronization of contents between drives is done automatically. But beware!

If youhave software mirror (feature in NT) you should observe event log very carefully. In case something goes wrong with your mirror, you will get just one message in your event log and if you oversee it you are running without fault tolerance.

One more thing. Having a fault tolerant drive (mirror or striped set with parity ie RAID5) does not mean you can run your machine without taking backups. Just imagine a virus or somebody deleting an important directory, this will be reflected on all drivesin mirror or RAID5.

I agree with Savatovic. Set up a mirror and
monitor it. As to the point made on NOT
USING RAID as a substitute for backup...I
have had a Compaq Server with
hardware raid that was one week old
have a failed Master Boot Record (MBR).
Oh and the Bad MBR is mirrored onto the
2nd drive!Can be repaired, but having a
backup makes you more comfortable with
the process.

a mirror set automatically copies everything from one drive to another. once you set it up and have it going, everything that is loaded onto your main hard drive is copied onto the mirror. you dont have to do a thing. i use mirroring on win98 andwhen i had my main hard drive crash all i had to do was to break the mirror, set the mirror drive as the boot drive and i was up and running. once i got a replacement drive i recreated the mirror. no headaches involved!

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