Backed up 2 Hard disks with one archive - how many hard disk do I need to recover to?

Hi - Apologies ahead of time for using naive terminology, I'm a newbie to anything much beyond powering up the computer ...

I use a program (Cubase) that simultaneously accesses two basic disks on my XP Home desktop, the C:/ drive (which has two partitions: one with the OS, Program files etc.; and the other one with some music samples, and a recovery disk file that came with the computer) and the E:/ drive (a RAID disk that has a lot of .wav files, among other things). I backed both these disks to one archive, which tests out just fine (Integrity Test).

I'd like to restore these disks and try to run my programs from the recovery disk(s) so I can prove to myself that I'll be able to do this in the future if my desktop hardware burns up or something like that.

I went out and bought a hard drive to recover to. But after reading the manual some more I started wondering: can I only restore 1 disk at a time ... and if I tried to restore two disks to the same recovery disk, would the 1st disk restored be erased when I restored the 2nd disk to the same recovery hard drive?

Do I need to buy TWO recovery hard drives, and recover the C:/ drive to one, and the E:/ drive to the other? Or can I somehow recover both of them to 1 recovery hard drive ... maybe with some kind of partition management?

Thanks much for your help!

 

Just do the recovery into one HDD that is larger then the original HDD's, recover each partition individually, during the recovery process you will be given the option to generate partitions on the recovery HDD and size them to be able to run all you programs from one HDD.
If you want to leave the old HDD in the computer, you will have to play with the assigned drives letters on the recovered HDD.

 

Cinncinatijack has provided the answer and congratulations on having the good sense to realize that you need to do a test restore to ensure it works before you really need it!

Since you are an admitted newbie I will give you some ideas that may be useful.

Before you start go into the BIOS at bootup and write down how your present drives are identified. Normally it is the model number of the drive and looks like a couple of letters with some numbers and letters. Note which port it says the drives are on this is usually on the first screen. Then advance along in the BIOS to Boot settings and record the settings of Hard Drives and Boot Priority. There are numerous BIOS variants around so my terms may not be exact. This will help you get back to where you started if there are problems.

After you have your archive you are going to test restore, turn off the PC and remove the existing drives. You don't have to physically remove them just unplug the data cable and probably the power cable since you may need it for the test drive. This absolutely ensures you can't screw up your existing drives should you pick the wrong device to restore to. On this point, make sure you have good partition labels to identify the partitions when doing the restore - do not rely on drive letters, the Linux recovery environment may assign different letters than Windows does (not a problem).

I am not clear on what you mean by running your programs from the recovery disks. Is this a Cubase recovery or are you referring to recovery disks that came with the computer? If the latter, these recovery disks usually mean that it will restore your computer to the day it came from the factory which is not what you normally want. Paragon lets you restore it to the current backup date.

Do you actually have a RAID array?

 

Thank you cincinnatijack and seekforever!

Cincinnatijack:

a) You wrote, "... recover each partition individually ...". Just to clarify what I think the situation is - these are not partitions I've backed up, but rather two separate hard drives (Number 1: ST380817AS; Number 2: Intel RAID_Volume0). Given that, will Paragon give me the option to restore/recover each of these HDDs into a separate partition of the new USB HDD?

b) You also wrote, "...If you want to leave the old HDD in the computer, you will have to play with the assigned drives letters on the recovered HDD."

..."Play with" ... as in BIOS changes (per your kind response in my other thread, "What exactly happens ...")? Or can I somehow reassign "C:/" to the new USB-HDD without going into BIOS (I fear changing BIOS settings unless I have to...)?

Seekforever:

Thanks for the suggestions to go to BIOS and write stuff down. When I did, I noticed something that puzzles me - In BIOS>Advanced>Drive Configuration>SATA Ports, I noticed:
- Port 0 is my 80GB SATA Seagate Drive #ST380817AS (which happens to be partitioned into a C:/ and D:/ drives) - this is as expected, not that interesting or puzzling.
- Port 1 is "0 detected" (not that interesting or puzzling to me either ...)
- Port 2 is labelled as "#ST380827AS" - now THAT is puzzling to me ... that "27" appears nowhere else I've seen. For example, Device Manager>Disk Drives does not list the "27" device (just the "17" and the 160GB (x2?) "RAID_Volume0" devices). Also, looking at my purchase invoice (it's a special-built computer), there is only one 80GB SATA drive listed, not two.

So, I can't figure out what exactly the BIOS is describing as associated with Port 2 - is it just giving the "...17..." 80GB hard drive a 2nd name, replacing "...17..." with "...27..."?

The other thing I find puzzling is that the SATA device listed under Device Manager>Disk Drives as "RAID_Volume0" is not assigned a Port Number...?

Those are just my meandering/newbie observations, likely not important or relevant, but I list them just in case they might be. But to answer your kind specific questions:

a) You wrote: "...I am not clear on what you mean by running your programs from the recovery disks. Is this a Cubase recovery or are you referring to recovery disks that came with the computer?"

I didn't write it clearly, sorry - to clarify/answer your question, I meant I wanted to run my Cubase program from the recovery HDD (not from the recovery disc I made). The main reason I'm backing up is to make sure I can run my Cubase program, which simultaneously accesses two hard drives (the "C:/" and "E:/" drives) from the recovery HDD.

b) You wrote, "...Do you actually have a RAID array? ..."

I don't know if I actually have a RAID array, I use the term only because when I go to Device Manager> Disk Drives, the 2nd one is labelled "Intel RAID_Volume0" (by the way, that is also the name listed as the 2nd one in the BIOS>BOOT>Hard Disk Drives).

c) I have been trying to avoid opening my case, but as far as I can tell, it needs to be done now. I'll report back with what I see when I do.


Thanks again, seekforever and cincinnatijack!

 

Here are some pics from inside my computer, I hope this helps narrow down some of my options and clarifies things.

BTW, seekforever, re: your question earlier as to whether I actually DO have a RAID array ... : My device manager>disk drives lists a single 320GB HDD called "RAID_Volume0", but from these two pictures, it looks like I have two 120GB [edit: typo, sorry, it's 160GB] drives (which is what my purchase invoice says I purchased) ... does that make it a RAID array?

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31_12-28-51_772.jpg

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31_12-30-03_589.jpg


http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31_12-34-33_806.jpg

I think this is my 80GB SATA HDD:

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31_12-24-37_654.jpg


Not knowing what is obvious to you folks, and hoping this isn't insulting ) ), in the pic below the "double" red cable at the bottom of the picture is coming the two black boxes that I think are my "joined" 160GB hard drives, and the "single" red cable is coming from the ?? 80GB SATA HDD:

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31_12-26-03_417.jpg

Just so I don't lose the forest for the trees, what I'm trying to figure out is what HDD(s?) I need to buy to recover/restore a backup image to so I can test that the backup actually worked. I'd like to run the OS, the Cubase program, and other programs (DVD player, Adobe, etc.) from the to-be-purchased HDD(s?), rather than the HDDs currently in my computer as pictured above. And finally, Cubase simultaneously accesses the C:/ drive (80GB) and the E:/ drive (320GB) in order to run.

Thanks for any help seekforever, cincinnatijack, or anyone else!

P.S. Is there a way to post the pictures themselves in these posts, rather than the links to them? Thanks!

 

It is very confusing, you have three SATA cable out of your motherboard, one is connected to something under the DVD player, it may be a HDD, two SATA cables are going to two HDD next to the DVD player, it may be the RAID array.

This is not telling me anything, just take a screenshot of the B&R 11 Disk View, that would tell us what you have and the size of the additional HDD that you need.

I don't understand how two 120GB drives (which is what your purchase invoice says) make 320GB HDD, but if you add the 80GB to the total it would make the 320GB that you are calling "RAID_Volume0", RAID 0 array is limited to two drives only.

Just link to the screenshot and will see what you have.

 

Hi cincinnatijack:

Thanks for following up on this with me!

There was a typo in one line - it's two times 160GB to make 320GB, I edited my original post (the other line had it correct at 160GB).

Here are the screen shots you asked for from the Paragon Backup and Recovery 2011 program:

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31ParagonDiskViewMainlyRAIDE.jpg
This, I'm guessing is the "combined" 320GB drive, made up of the two 160GB drives ... is that the definition of a RAID?

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31ParagonDiskViewMainlyC.jpg

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31ParagonDiskViewMainlyD.jpg
The C:/ and D:/ drives are partitions of one drive, the 80GB one (the one under the DVD?).

 

You have a total of 25GB on disk 0 and 64GB on disk 1, you can buy a 500GB HDD for under $50, this disk will hold about six backups of all your information, i would make image backup of each partition C:, D: and E:.

I would recover the C: partition and change the partition size to 40GB making the D: partition 40GB.

Yes your disk 1 is RAID array and you can treat it as one drive, just change the name to something more meaningful like Music or Data instead of SATA RAID.

 

Thank you cincinnatijack!

Some questions to get me closer, if I could:

1) You wrote to get a 500GB HDD for 6 backups or so - if I do my math right, that would be for the C:/ and D:/ drives. I guess using the same ratio, I'd get a 1 or 2 TB drive for the E:/ drive backup?

2) As you noticed, it's kind of a rat's nest in there. Would you recommend I just dig in, unscrew, and temporarily remove the three drives, install the newly purchased backup drives, and then try to run all the programs from those new drives?
-- The "double" RAID drive too?

-- or can I avoid digging around in the case by doing this with external USB-connected HDDs ... how would I temporarily rename the USB-HDD as "C:/" and "E:/", so the computer bypassed the original drives (which would still be in the case)? If so, would that be a BIOS thing? I'm not dead set against making BIOS changes, but before I do I'd want to find out what precautions I can take to help recover from BIOS-newbie errors I might make ...

Thanks much, again cincinnatijack, and/or anyone else who wants to chip in with more great ideas!

 

Do not make any physical changes to your computer, buy one 500GB USB hard drive and make image backup of each partition individually.

To test the backup, just recover each partition at a time while using the computer normally. You can't run Windows XP trough the USB port and if you are unconformable working with the BIOS you can't change the RAID configuration.

The total amount of data that you have in your computer is about 90GB (that is ALL your drives), with normal compression the 500GB drive will have room for six backups of ALL your drives.

 

Hi Cincinnatijack!

1.

. I get it now - headsmack smiley here! I had gone out and gotten a 1TB USB-HDD earlier in the weekend, so I'm good to go from that point of view.


2.

I actually started a recovery earlier in the weekend, but I stopped early because Paragon was going to do it one physical drive at a time. I had read in the manual that recovery would erase everything on the drive - I wasn't sure I could get the 2nd physical drive on the USB-HDD without erasing the 1st.

Should I use Paragon to format/partition the USB-HDD ahead of time, and recover each physical drive to its own partition? Or ...?


3.

I'm a little lost here ... a big part of the test in my mind is peace of mind that I can run everything, XP and the programs that access the .wav files and other data on the RAID drive, after recovering. Will running the computer normally as you say (are you saying run XP on the existing drive?) allow me to do that? I'm OK at least looking at what might need to be changed in BIOS if that's the only option to get to where I need to be.

Thanks, cincinnatijack - your patience is Zen-like!

 

A couple more general comments, cinncinatijack is more familiar with Paragon and RAID than I am, so follow his instructions.

USB drives normally come formatted FAT32 so they can be used with XP and other OSs which don't support NTFS. That's fine but a problem that can get you is that it only supports filesizes up to 4GB. If you try to store a 5GB image it will balk and likely tell you it has insufficient space. Of course you can have Paragon split the image archive at 4GB or less but IMO a better solution is to refomat the drive NTFS which is a better filesystem than FAT32.You can format it in Windows if you wish, you don't have to use Paragon.

I wouldn't bother partitioning a backup drive; just create a folder for each partition on your system.

Before you start fidding with the imaging and restoration protect your important data files. The OS and apps can always be reinstalled (you do have your CD/DVDs, serial numbers, etc where you can find them?) but if you lose the work you created yourself you are up the creek. First thing, copy the data files from the drives into folders your backup external drive just using Windows Explorer. If something goes wrong with your newbie use of Paragon you won't lose your data files.

 

Thanks for that, seekforever! I am currently backing up my data files using Windows Explorer (drag and drop), as well as the programs that I don't have disks for because I downloaded them off the web. Thankfully I have disks for the big programs (XP, Cubase, etc.).

Here is a screen shot from Paragon ... it shows two HDDs - one ("Hard Disk 0" in the screenshot) partitioned into [the C:/ drive (includes the OS, program files) and the D:/ drive (some audio files, and other stuff)] - that one is formatted as a FAT32. The other HDD ("Hard Disk 1") is the E:/ drive with all my most precious data, and it is formatted as NTFS.

http://i1089.photobucket.com/albums/i341/tunesin/Music%20Computer%20Pics/2011-07-31ParagonDiskViewMainlyC.jpg

When you say:

, do you mean the words "each partition" as "C:/", "D:/", and "E:/" ... three partitions, three folders?

Or - two partitions ("Hard Disk 0" in the language of the screenshot, which includes "C:/" and "D:/" drives ; and "Hard Disk 1", which is the "E:/" drive), two folders?

Thanks again!

 

Alas ... Windows has terminated the drag-and-drop transfers (to another storage drive) multiple times with multiple restarts by me ... "file name too long...", and other such administrative arrgghisms.

Too many files to go through and "prune" the names, or whatever else Windows might want me to do ... is the drag-and-drop not going to happen, I guess?

 

Right now I'm a bit sorry I said that but I was thinking of your question about setting up a partition on the external for each partition on your internal drives.

You can do whatever you want with folders to assist in finding stored images but I'll tell you what I do:

First have a look at what Paragon offers as a default filename for the partition and see if it is meaningful to you. If it is good for you then use it.

I change the automatic filename to my own scheme which for the backup of the C partition on computer named Music today would be:
CMus11Aug01_optionalstuffifany
C for the C partition, Mus for the computer name such as Music and then the date in YYMMMDD format. _optionalstuffifany can be some notes such as: After Cubase updated. If it is just a regular backup then nothing is added.

I also make use of the Comments facility in Paragon.

This works well for me since I only image partitions as a rule but if I do more than one partition in an image, say C and E, I would change the name to C-EMus11Aug01. I also only do an image manually when it suits me, not scheduled, so I don't know how my filename scheme would work with the scheduler script.

My folders on the backup drive would be for specific PCs since I have several not the partitions I originally said. This is how I do it but you can use any scheme you want.

 

Seekforever and cincinnatijack, you guys are a wealth of information. Some of it seems so obvious seeing it in black and white ... but it's helping me lots nonetheless!

 

WOW ... someone just recommended a "SATA USB enclosure" as a way to backup/clone. I went on line and saw something like this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/e6d9/ . This seems like it could be very clean ...

I wonder though if the USB connection would restrict some files from making it across to the clone target? As far as testing the clone, I could put it in another old computer and see if XP boots up, and if I can use Cubase.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks -

 

If you are cloning your system and installing it in another computer, don't forget to do the P2P Adjust OS Wizard from the B&R 11.

 

Note that's for 2.5" drives only. I back up to a Thermaltake BlacX 5G which handles 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

 

wptski - Have you popped the target clone into a computer and checked that the OS boots up/all other programs and files are fine?

Thanks -

 

Why not put the test target drive into the machine and see if the recovery CD boots up and recovers the image to the new drive and it then boots up rather than introducing a bunch of additional complications like USB etc into the test?

The exercise is to determine if the system can be restored if the drive fails so lets pretend it failed and then see if the whole process works. After all, if the drive dies a new one will need to be installed anyway so he might as well find out where it is and how to do it now.

 

No! At that time it took 14 Hrs using USB 2.0 to clone a drive, a method I used on my old XP laptop for backups. I just started using HD images for backups, much faster, etc. There was an issue finding USB 3.0 32-bit drivers, now solved, so a clone would be much faster.

I have a 750G in the machine and two spares that I use in the docking station for backup images. If a drive fails, in a pinch, I could use one of them although I'd to keep all of them.

P.S. OT but I used to use Cubase on a Atari Stacy, Syquest drives, Ensonic ASR10, etc, etc, etc. Still have it all and haven't fired it up in years, wouldn't know how now. Apple guys say that it can't work but it did!!