Utility to (Auto) Mirror Hard Drive?
Jason Galterio
Posts: 2,562
So today Amazon is having a USB Memory Sale, which parted me with some of my money. But it also led me to think of something.
I use DS on both a laptop and my desktop. My laptop is mostly used for the scene set up and brainstorming. The desktop mostly as the fine tuner and final renderer. Which means I have DS installed on both and transfer a lot of project files back and forth.
I have also customized the setup of my DS installation so files are "isolated" so to speak:
Drive C: has my DS excutibles and my plugins.
Drive D: has my static DS content directories, since these files don't change.
Drive E: has my "DAZ Data" directory (where all the auto generated custom geometeries end up) as well as my project files.
Obviously C and D are pretty large, but E doesn't need to be.
Which led me to the thought why don't I see about either Mirroring or RAID/1 my E drive to one of the new thumbdrives? This would provide me with two benefits: an immediate back up for my project files, which otherwise are not easily recoverable, and being able to quickly transport new project files from one computer to another.
Does anyone know of any Windows settings that will automatically do this? Or third party applications that can? I essentially want to automatically save any changes on the E drive to the thumbdrive at the same time.
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Comments
Flash drives really aren't the best format for archiving data. They're far less reliable than conventionial hard drives, have a shorter llife expectency and... as I've personally learned.. can fail to store data even while electronically giving you the big thumbs up. They're fine for transporting data, as long as you've got secure copies elsewhere, but you can get a 1TB portable hardrive for under $60 these days and it's a much safer bet in the long run. For other backup ideas, you might want to look at this site - http://www.backupnut.com/flash.html
Oh, I know. This arrangement really wouldn't be for long term or emergency use.
I have an external SSD that I use for regular backups. This is more for interum and transport than anything else.
I would go for a hard drive rather than a memory stick. It isn't the first one I have had fail.
If you are on Widows and do get an external hard drive try Synctoy from Microsoft.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=15155
It's free and I use it to sync my laptop to my main pc, an external hard drive and my NAS drive. You can't be too careful, I also burn all my pictures to DVD
You're absolutely right, but your list of backups had me thinking about an old "Hogan's Heroes" episode. Paraphrased: One for the file cabinet, one for HQ, one for the fire-proof safe, and one in case the fire-proof safe catches fire.
"Mirroring or RAID/1 my E drive to one of the new thumbdrives"
It is not possible to do this with any combination of internal and external drives, much less an external USB thumbdrive and an internal hard drive. That is just as well, since RAID of any flavour is not, I repeat is not, a backup solution, nor was it ever intended to be. The roots of RAID are in the server room, where mirroring was used to create redundancy across multiple volumes (drives). This redundancy was not desirable to prevent data loss, perse, as a true backup solution is intended to do, but to prevent server downtime in the event of a drive failure. If a drive fails in a server array, the drives can be hot-swapped - pull out the problem drive, plug in a new one - and the server carries on throughout the whole affair as though nothing had happened. On a PC there are few users who have hot-swap capabilities, and, more importantly perhaps, require uninterrupted 24\7 uptime. So forget about RAID. As Fishtales said, use a backup solution that will regularly, incrementally backup your desired data. There are many such solutions available. In addition to Synctoy as mentioned, both WD and Seagate offer free versions of Acronis for their drives for example.
Not exactly a "mirror" solution, but something I've done in similar situations... Free File Sync http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/ is a program that allows you to take any directory or set of directories in one place and sync it with another. It can also be set as a recurring event by making it a Windows Scheduled Task. Just set the file direction to mirror in one direction only, and it essentially clones from one place to another. Since it "tracks" the changes in the files, it goes pretty quickly, as it only copies/deletes the files that were updated since the last sync. Just be sure to keep an eye on the scheduled task if Windows updates. Sometimes updates erase your scheduled tasks, in which case the auto-sync thing would stop working until you rescheduled it.
huh, I've never had a flash drive fail*. I mean, I've had em go thru the washing machine and still work.
(I wouldn't use them for holding Daz content, mind you..way too slow access for it).
*I have had a couple become corrupted so they don't work right, but that's due to some issue with LG's drivers for usbs with tvs and blu ray players...but since I don't use that tech anymore, no issues).
If you've got a decent internet connection from both machines...
...and live in a civilised part of the world, with no data caps, no bandwidth throttling etc.
Then consider one of the many cloud sync solutions.
Once it's setup you won't have to transfer a stick back and forth and your data is still local and accessible, even when there's no internet.
For the paranoid amongst us
... with something like Tonido, which I have been using for years, there is no copy of your data on the internet.