Hi there!

I've become a lurker in these forums lately, I know. Too much personal 
stuff going on thats keeping me from being creative or from getting the 
time to create the images, much less show them off (can't scream 
everything private into the public, can I?).

Anyways, I'm currently pondering two rather technical issues concerning 
data storage.

1. I'm suspecting my HD in my PC to fry soon. It's making weird noises, 
needs time spinning up and is getting way too loud for its own good. 
It's SATA and the connection-slot looks shot, the connections on the HD 
lay bare when removing the cable, so I'm not even sure if the data gets 
sent there properly.
Now, before you scream: "Do your backup!" - it's sitting in a Raid 1 
configuration, so if that specific HD dies, I'll still have one with the 
data.
However, I'm thinking of switching the expected faulty one with a 
different one, which would be bigger in storage capacity. I know that 
I'd lose the extra storage when I just mirror the smaller HD onto the 
bigger one, but I'm thinking about just buying two bigger ones, first 
mirror the smaller onto the bigger, then put the second big one into the 
raid and mirror them yet again, THEN arrange new partitions on the now 
unused bigger space. Anybody have a clue if that's going to work? I'd 
rather not reinstall my entire PC.

2. My dad's PC (or better, its motherboard) fried itself recently and 
since then he's got troubles keeping track of all his data. He's got a 
PC at his office, one at home, and two laptops he's working with. You 
might think no one should need that many computers, and I agree, but 
that's how things turned out for him at work and due to software 
licensing issues.
Anyways, he's starting to lose track of all the backups and versions of 
work he's doing on various PCs and I was wondering if anyone knows of a 
good, reliable software, which might just require an external HD to keep 
a specific folder (or various thereof) synchronized across multiple 
computers? My ideal would be something he'd install on any computer he'd 
need, and then just plug the external HD in, it'll synchronise the 
computer with the HD, and when he leaves the PC, he'll just synchronise 
again and take the HD along. All he'd need to do every now and then is 
backup the external HD and he'd have a lot less trouble keeping his 
stuff uptodate and backed up.
Any ideas or suggestions?

Regards,
Tim

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Tim Nikias wrote:
> Anybody have a clue if that's going to work? I'd 
> rather not reinstall my entire PC.

The way I moved to a larger disk was to use DriveXML (a free 
backup/restore/mirror program) to copy the small drive onto the larger 
drive, then swapped out the small drive for the second big drive and 
mirrored it back again.

If you're doing RAID, you'd use the RAID for that second step, of course.

> My ideal would be something he'd install on any computer he'd 
> need, and then just plug the external HD in, it'll synchronise the 
> computer with the HD, and when he leaves the PC, he'll just synchronise 
> again and take the HD along. 

Assuming you're talking Windows again...

Google for "synctoy powertools."  Alternately, that's what the 
"briefcase" icon is supposed to do for you, but I never got it to work 
right. Maybe I just didn't understand it. The "briefcase" would be your HD.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc162483.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en


Alternately, google for jungledisk. This lets you put your encrypted 
files up on Amazon's servers, and keeps them synchronized automatically 
in the background. You could edit them right in that virtual drive, and 
when you save it, it pushes them up in the background.  I'm pretty sure 
it works to map the same files to multiple machines, but you'd want to 
double-check that first. Then you're not even lugging around a HD.

Have you considered what happens to your data if you lose the HD? Is 
there anything on there of enough value that you're screwed if it gets 
stolen?  A NOC list, perhaps?

HTH.
-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> The way I moved to a larger disk was to use DriveXML (a free 

Oh, just as a bit more detail here, DriveXML is the only backup program 
I've found for free that will actually back up and restore the registry 
properly. The XP backup program has restrictions that keep it from 
actually working. Vista's works, tho, interestingly enough - you can 
actually restore a full backup from a USB drive and have it work.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> Tim Nikias wrote:
>> Anybody have a clue if that's going to work? I'd rather not reinstall 
>> my entire PC.
> 
> The way I moved to a larger disk was to use DriveXML (a free 
> backup/restore/mirror program) to copy the small drive onto the larger 
> drive, then swapped out the small drive for the second big drive and 
> mirrored it back again.
> 
> If you're doing RAID, you'd use the RAID for that second step, of course.

Well, if I'd just exchange one HD with the bigger one, my Raid 
controller would exclaim that the Raid broke and would offer me to 
mirror the functional (small) HD onto the new, bigger and empty one. 
That's what Raid 1 is supposed to do.
Then, I exchange the functional small HD, in effect letting the 
controller believe that, yet again, one HD failed, and mirrors the first 
HD onto the second.
Voila! 250GB worth of Data mirrored onto 500GB.
Final step: Just partition the remaining, unused 250GB. The controller 
is a hardware one and acts as if only one HD is attached to the PC, so 
in theory, that should work.
But I'll look into that tomorrow, I guess. :-)

>> My ideal would be something he'd install on any computer he'd need, 
>> and then just plug the external HD in, it'll synchronise the computer 
>> with the HD, and when he leaves the PC, he'll just synchronise again 
>> and take the HD along. 
> 
> Assuming you're talking Windows again...
> 
> Google for "synctoy powertools."  Alternately, that's what the 
> "briefcase" icon is supposed to do for you, but I never got it to work 
> right. Maybe I just didn't understand it. The "briefcase" would be your HD.
> 
> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc162483.aspx
>
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52&displaylang=en

> 
> 
> 
> Alternately, google for jungledisk. This lets you put your encrypted 
> files up on Amazon's servers, and keeps them synchronized automatically 
> in the background. You could edit them right in that virtual drive, and 
> when you save it, it pushes them up in the background.  I'm pretty sure 
> it works to map the same files to multiple machines, but you'd want to 
> double-check that first. Then you're not even lugging around a HD.
> 
> Have you considered what happens to your data if you lose the HD? Is 
> there anything on there of enough value that you're screwed if it gets 
> stolen?  A NOC list, perhaps?

I'll look into that tomorrow as well, got to get to work now. But a 
server-side thingy is out of the question, my dad doesn't want to need 
the internet for that.
Theft is a thing I should keep in mind, thanks for pointing that out.

Regards,
Tim

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Tim Nikias schrieb:
> (...)
> Anyways, he's starting to lose track of all the backups and versions of 
> work he's doing on various PCs and I was wondering if anyone knows of a 
> good, reliable software, which might just require an external HD to keep 
> a specific folder (or various thereof) synchronized across multiple 
> computers?


AllwaySync works really great. It cannot be confused by differing system 
clocks or when files are edited at multiple locations before syncing. 
There is a free version for testing purposes or personal low-volume 
usage (up to 20.000 files in 30 days). The Pro versions are affordable, 
too. There is a Version ('n' Go) which can be installed on the usb drive 
and runs without further installing directly from there on any (Windows) 
PC (Haven't tried that one myself, but the standard version [which is 
for installation on one PC] works very well).

Manuel

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Tim Nikias wrote:
> Well, if I'd just exchange one HD with the bigger one, my Raid 
> controller would exclaim that the Raid broke and would offer me to 
> mirror the functional (small) HD onto the new, bigger and empty one. 
> That's what Raid 1 is supposed to do.

Sure, I understand. I thought you'd wanted to actually have a bigger 
file system when you were done, tho, rather than just a new empty partition.

> I'll look into that tomorrow as well, got to get to work now. But a 
> server-side thingy is out of the question, my dad doesn't want to need 
> the internet for that.

OK. Check out synctoy. It works really nicely. I use it for keeping the 
backup of my vacation photos and music library synced between backup 
disks, my desktop, and my media server.

> Theft is a thing I should keep in mind, thanks for pointing that out.

Yeah. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be easy to keep 
everything encrypted with the native encryption stuff if you have 
different logins at work and at home. At least in XP, you can't set a 
folder to automatically encrypt for someone else when you create a file. 
(I.e., you manually have to add the second key to every file one at a 
time - rather stupidly suckful.)  Unless perhaps he puts an escrow key 
on and encrypts everything to the escrow key, and he copies that key to 
all his machines. I don't know if you can put the key from one user as 
the primary key for another user, so everyone is using the same key. If 
so, problem solved once it's set up. Just encrypt the whole drive.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Tim Nikias wrote:
> 
> Well, if I'd just exchange one HD with the bigger one, my Raid 
> controller would exclaim that the Raid broke and would offer me to 
> mirror the functional (small) HD onto the new, bigger and empty one. 
> That's what Raid 1 is supposed to do.
> Then, I exchange the functional small HD, in effect letting the 
> controller believe that, yet again, one HD failed, and mirrors the first 
> HD onto the second.
> Voila! 250GB worth of Data mirrored onto 500GB.
> Final step: Just partition the remaining, unused 250GB. The controller 
> is a hardware one and acts as if only one HD is attached to the PC, so 
> in theory, that should work.
> But I'll look into that tomorrow, I guess. :-)
> 

I would expect the results that you just posted - that after swapping 
all of the drives you would still have a 250GB mirror and the other 
250GB is unused.

If you were using purely software RAID you would likely be able to do 
what you want - depending on the OS.

But hardware or firmware RAID - I think you might run into trouble.


In my experience most RAID controllers will allow only 1 RAID partition 
on which you can create your normal partitions - like you have now.

forgive the format
the OS sees the marked parts
A normal drive may be set up like this - forgive the format
<drive><part><data></data></part><part><data></data></part></drive>
        ****************************************************


A hardware raid setup may look like this
<drive><RAID><part><data></data></part><part><data></data></part></RAID></drive>
              ****************************************************


your situation may very well be this
<drive><RAID><part><data></data></part></RAID><space>250GB</space></drive>
              **************************


Unless your RAID controller is designed specifically to do so, it cannot 
expand the RAID to the entire drive - nor can it create a second RAID 
section at the end of the drive.


You may be able to get it to work using Linux, but that can take a lot 
of time only to find that it didn't work.  Running NTFS may complicate 
this to being non feasible.  At any rate, the effort to do this may be 
more than reinstalling the OS.


Just in case you want to try, here's a rough outline - it's Linux heavy.
It's unproven in this context, but I use something very similar to keep 
expanding our linux server storage with limited drive bays, controllers 
and resources.

Set up one 500GB drive as a RAID 1 drive (the entire space)
Run the other 500GB drive as is (250GB data, 250GB space)
Run Linux and be able to see and work with both drives.
Setup a partition on the entire 500GB array.
Get logical volumes running.
set up the 250GB partition as a LV.
Add the 500GB space to the LV.
tell LV to stop using the 250GB patition.
	it will mirror all data to the 500 GB partition.
expand the filesystem - GParted works nice.
try it out
if it works, try *rebuilding* the 500GB array.


Again, with Windows and NTFS, this may be near impossible as linux and 
NTFS are not best of friends.





Your controller may offer more than one RAID partition per HD, but I've 
found that this usually is a special feature that a few controllers 
offer - and when it is offered, it is advertised.

In fact, the only RAID controllers that I have run across have been 
Intel's ICH series that offer Matrix storage - but I have not done a 
search for the feature, only run across it while building a new PC. 
This is a nice feature and I currently have it in use - I have 2 HDs - 
one part is RAID1 for protection - another is RAID0 for mass storage of 
junk.




Best of luck!


Tom

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Tom Austin wrote:
> Just in case you want to try, here's a rough outline - it's Linux heavy.

I'm not sure why (regardless of OS) you wouldn't just break the raid, 
install the new disk, partition it large, copy the files over, then put 
in the other big disk and mirror it out again. If anything goes wrong, 
you have the original drive you broke off the RAID to start over with.

In both Linux and Windows, it's easy to copy all the files from a 
smaller partition to a larger partition without a problem. Why make it 
difficult by trying to use RAID hardware to copy files? Especially since 
you'll wind up waiting for it to copy free space and everything.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>> Just in case you want to try, here's a rough outline - it's Linux heavy.
> 
> I'm not sure why (regardless of OS) you wouldn't just break the raid, 
> install the new disk, partition it large, copy the files over, then put 
> in the other big disk and mirror it out again. If anything goes wrong, 
> you have the original drive you broke off the RAID to start over with.
> 
> In both Linux and Windows, it's easy to copy all the files from a 
> smaller partition to a larger partition without a problem. Why make it 
> difficult by trying to use RAID hardware to copy files? Especially since 
> you'll wind up waiting for it to copy free space and everything.
> 

If the setup can take a simple copy, that would work and save a lot of time.

But if the system cannot take a simple copy, it is an alternative.

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Tom Austin wrote:
> If the setup can take a simple copy, that would work and save a lot of 
> time.
> 
> But if the system cannot take a simple copy, it is an alternative.

Aside of a few troubles with how the software tells what it's doing (I 
mirrored the old drive onto the new one to find that it didn't rebuild 
the Raid 1, so I had to copy all over again when I said to rebuil), it 
worked flawlessly:
1. Exchange first faulty HD with bigger one
2. Mirror small drive onto big one
3. Exchange second faulty small HD with bigger one
4. Mirror from big to big
5. Use Windows to partition the new 230GB worth of space

No troubles with the controller figuring that out. :-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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