Data-Safe & Disk Space

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Groff wrote:

I have a Dimension E510 with a 250GB drive and the "Data-Safe" backup strategy.  XP, Media Center.  I just wanted to confirm how Data-Safe works and ask a few questions.

 

I've just been through Dell Hel* (tech support) to find out what was going on.  Actually, it wasn't that bad, once I found someone who knew what he was talking about.

 

Reason I called was that I started getting messages from Ghost that it couldn't do any more backups because I'd exceeded the 60GB backup capacity.  Huh?  I thought I had 250GB.  But Windows showed a C: drive with 170GB and a D: drive with only 60GB.

 

So here's what's going on, as I understand it.  I do in fact have two 250GB disks -- you can see them in the BIOS setup.  The second one is mirroring the first using RAID.  This is invisible to the Windows OS, which lives in a world where Drive 2 does not exist.

 

What I thought were the two physical drives are actually two partitions on Drive 1 (mirrored, invisibly, on Drive 2).  D: is a virtual disk that holds the Norton Ghost backups.

 

The RAID mirror protects me against failure of Drive 1.  It does nothing to protect against viruses or OS screwups; if that happened, I'd just have two useless disks instead of just one useless disk.  (Well, they would be useful, but only as blank, reformatted disks with all my data destroyed.)  Hence the Ghost backup.

 

Here are my questions:

 

1.  Does a Ghost backup on a partition of a hard drive really protect you?  Are there virus/OS screw-up scenarios in which my C: partition would be hosed, but the D: partition would be OK?  Do I still need to do backups to other media, or online (i.e., three backup systems)?

 

Yes, C could be hosed and D ok UNLESS you have a hard drive failure. 

 

2.  Ghost only does full system backups, not selected files/folders.  (Took me forever to confirm this on the web; Ghost documentation is terrible.)  Thus, once I use 60GB of my C: partition, the remaining 170-60=110GB of space is useless (well, I can use it but then the Ghost backup is useless).  Correct?  Or will compression somehow solve the problem?

 

Actually, Ghost backups PARTITIONS, not systems.  I setup my systems as C and M (for My Documents), then use Ghost to image each.  Norton Save & Restore (Ghost 11) does files and folders. 

 

Compression will help, but if your C drive is 60gb then you'll still have issues.  I backup my C drives (4 machines) and keep 4 versions, uses a lot of space.

 

3.  Assuming I now have only a 60GB effective disk capacity, should I repartition (ugh) the drive so that it's 50/50?  So I would then have 125GB backed up storage?  If I do that, can I delink the RAID drive and use it to restore my system to the repartitioned Drive 1, then reinstate the mirroring?

 

If you repartition, you disable Dell PC Restore by Symantec.  But you're thinking the right way.  I can't answer the RAID question.

 

4.  Instead, should I get rid of Ghost and just rely on MS System Restore, plus a program like Stomp PC Backup to backup documents, pictures, videos, etc.?  Rather than repartition, I could just use the D: drive to keep the Stomp backups and store other stuff.

 

If you uinstall Ghost, or use CTRL F11, you get an option to remove the D partition and give it to C.  Then, buy Ghost (cheaper buying it anyway) or Acronis TrueImage and image to AN EXTERNAL DRIVE.

 

5.  Why doesn't Dell tell you any of this?  I guess Data-Safe is supposed to be for non-technical users, but when the strategy fails at 60GB, what are you supposed to do?  My guess is that users just ignore the Ghost messages, and merrily continue with a Ghost backup that doesn't work any more and 60GB of useless disk space which holds the backups.   That don't work any more.  Kind of ... misleading, shall we say, to be kind ... to sell you 500GB of total disk space without telling you you can't get 250GB of backed-up storage, or anywhere near that, no matter what.

 

Incompetence.  Engineers come up with solution, marketers don't sell and explain it.

Or ...

 

I forget about this RAID business, delink the hard drives (can I do that?) and use Ghost to back up to the second drive.  Why wouldn't that work?  If the first drive fails, can't I boot from a disk and restore everything from the second drive?

Groff,

I can't answer your question about disconnecting and reconnecting your mirrored drives as I cannot be sure how the software is setup. I know this can be done when a controller card is involved but I don't know if it's possible when a software managed array is involved.

There is another way to utilize the additional space on the 170GB partition without changing Ghost or the mirror. If you were to change the target of each users My Documents folder to the D drive and kept your files there instead of on the C drive you would in effect be using the 110GB of space you cannot access now. This would also preserve the space on the C drive, and in the event you had to restore from the Ghost backup, your files would still be tucked away on the D partition. Separating user files from the system files and applications is nothing new and is considered best practice by many, further this resolves the disc space you thought was lost. You and others may have already picked up on the following but I'll finish for those who have not. Each users files in My Documents would be mirrored to the second drive as well as the OS and Apps. in the event the primary drive failed. In theory you should be able to boot to the second drive and not see a difference. Ghost images C to D and the mirror creates a copy of C,D, and your files from drive 1 to drive 2.

Marc

It seems if I moved My Documents onto the 60GB D: partition I would have even less usable space because that would cut into the space Ghost needs for its backup.

 

Moving My Dox to a separate partition is a good idea, but the more I read the more I think I need to "break RAID" -- which I should be able to do using Ctrl-I on boot without losing data (since RAID 1 is mirroring, not striped).  Then I can use Ghost or maybe another backup/disk-imaging utility -- Acronis looks good -- and use the entire second drive for backups.  It seems to me that this still protects against a hard drive failure, although recovery may not be as quick and seamless as having a RAID mirror.

 

It just seems crazy to have 500 GB of disk space and only be able to use a quarter of it or less (because you're using half your mirrored drive to store Ghost backups).  There's a trade-off between utility and security.

 

Anyone know how big a partition needs to be if all it's holding is XP (i.e., because other stuff has been moved to separate partitions)?  Do all installed applications have to be on the XP partition, or will they run from a separate partition?