How to make 2nd HD exact copy of my "C" drive automatically?

[Rex]

Hi All:

I just started a new system and installed Win XP-Pro.

I have a "C" drive that is a serial ATA. And, I have a second hard drive that is a regular IDE with the 80 line cable (AT 100 I think).

My new motherboard has 2 RAID controlers but I have one hard drive on the SATA and the other on and IDE.

Question: Is there a way that my other HDD (it is "F" in this computer) can be configured to automatically be an exact copy of my boot drive "C"? I think with the RAID stuff this is possible but since I don't have two compatiable drives this will not work.

Thanks for the help!

[oosik]

u can only raid, either with 2 ie or 2 sata. can't go from sata to ide or vise-versa. only way i know to do what you want is to use drive image or ghost......something along those lines

[rave]

your HDDs also have to be the same type ie. same brand,same size, same speed = same model
ghost seems a good option

[HAL9000]

No, they don't need to be the same size, type, speed for mirroring, it's just ideal to have them identical.

[ZeratulsAvenger]

I dont think they have to be the EXACT same to have a raid set up, but I think mixing IDE and SATA doesnt go. I have a program I just started to use, CopyTo Synchronizer(search download.com or versiontracker.com) that I set up to check files that have been changed twice a week(monday and friday... You can choose any days, all days, once a year, whatever) and recopies over any changed files to my 2ndary location, being a 2nd hard drive in my case. I am sure you could probably set it to take the whole drive(Copy from C: to other drive) and tell it to check nightly at 9am or something. It scans, tells you the changed files, and then would copy them over. I assume the hard drive would be bootable as well if you copied everything, since the registry information is stored within the Windows folder I would guess, so if your main rive failed the 2nd could be booted from. I think that would work. It wouldn't give teh speed boosts of RAID obviously though(quite the opposite when it was copying files over).

[Rex]

Originally Posted by ZeratulsAvenger I dont think they have to be the EXACT same to have a raid set up, but I think mixing IDE and SATA doesnt go. I have a program I just started to use, CopyTo Synchronizer(search download.com or versiontracker.com) that I set up to check files that have been changed twice a week(monday and friday... You can choose any days, all days, once a year, whatever) and recopies over any changed files to my 2ndary location, being a 2nd hard drive in my case. I am sure you could probably set it to take the whole drive(Copy from C: to other drive) and tell it to check nightly at 9am or something. It scans, tells you the changed files, and then would copy them over. I assume the hard drive would be bootable as well if you copied everything, since the registry information is stored within the Windows folder I would guess, so if your main rive failed the 2nd could be booted from. I think that would work. It wouldn't give teh speed boosts of RAID obviously though(quite the opposite when it was copying files over).

I will give that a try and thank you!

[ZeratulsAvenger]

Wow, I said "Check nightly at 9am" Hmm... Well... You get the idea Hope it works