I'm going to RAID with new systems. Questions re. backup scenario

This site was suggested to me by someone on another forum.

I'm building two new identical systems which have onboard raid 0,1,0+1,5.
I'm probably going to use RAID 1 as I've suffered through the expensive recovery from a crashed hard drive before. I have 4 SATA connectors on each board plus 1 IDE as well. I'll be doing backups on a Plextor PX-716UF. I have 5 new 80GB Seagate SATA drives and 2 existing 80GB IDE drives that could be used for backup as well. I also have a 24GB Seagate dds tape drive but it's very slow. Honestly, 80GB is enough storage for me.

In the past I've used Ghost to make image backups and that's been fine except that it won't span tapes and support for raid looks iffy at best. So now I'm considering the Acronis software though I'm not sure the home version will do RAID. I've downloaded the trial workstation version.


So my questions.

1. If I build a RAID 1 set, load the OS (XP pro 32bit), load all the updates can I then use Acronis or the latest version of Ghost to clone another set for the second machine?
Or how exactly do I accomplish this? The two mother boards are Gigabyte with the same chipset ( NVIDIA GeForce 6100 / nForce 430) and only differ by the # of PCI slots. So I'm thinking a clone should work?

2. I have read through(mostly skimmed) the workstation version manual for Acronis and it does some impressive things but I am wondering if it is a little too much for a simple home 2-desktop 1-laptop and 1-tablet network.

Would the home version be enough or does it not support Raid?
The lack of tape support for backups in the home version does not concern me. I think the DVDs are my future.

3. Could I utilize my spare 80GB IDE drives for the Acronis "backup zone?" ?
Could I use them to hold the IMAGE backup of the raid set as well?

Thanks for any advice.

Bob

 

Anyone have some thoughts on this?

 

Hello staatsof,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Acronis True Image 10.0 Home fully supports RAID configurations (including RAID 0,1,5, etc.) even while booted from Bootable Rescue media. The stanalone version of Acronis True Image uses embedded Linux drivers for RAID arrays.

You can use any hard drive to create Acronis Secure Zone, as well as to store image files. Please also notice the new feature of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home - Acronis Backup Locations - which allows automatic archive file management in any chosen folder, as well as other possibilities. You can learn more about Acronis Backup Locations from chapter 7 "Backup location management" of the respective User's Guide.

Please be aware that we do not guarantee the image restored to another system without using Acronis Universal Restore add-on will be bootable. Acronis Universal Restore add-on can only be installed with corporate versions of Acronis True Image.

Please also notice that according to Acronis Licensing Policy you should purchase a license of Acronis Product per computer it will be used on.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

A few.
With so many drives, I wouldn't use the Secure Zone at all unless you think a user with "all thumbs" might accidentally delete a Backup Image.
Also be aware that backing up directly to dvd or cd is very slow compared to using a hard drive (internal or external). And the worst part is if you have to Recover and Image from dvd media where the Image spans 3 or more discs. You'll be having to swap discs in and out for what seems like an unending process. Backup to a hard drive and then burn the Image to dvds if you want to have a second backup set on dvd.