Can I setup a 'Mirrored' drive

[Forehaven]

like in a RAID configuration, but using two ext. drives in a fanless ext. enclosures, like the DataTale 3.5-inch FireWire 800/400, eSATA, USB External Enclosure instead of like the 2 or 4 bay fan cooled enclosure?

 

It'd be great if I could as I could locate the drives in the audio room without any noise from fan usage.

 

Thanks for any suggestions,

Chris

 

[Lizard_King]

For Audio Playback, you want u follow the K.I.S.S policy. Raid is not what you want.

 

[Forehaven]

I agree Lizard_King. But does that mean I can setup two ext. enclosures/drives in a mirrored configuration?

 

[BobH]

There are many backup programs out there that will do what you want. You need to look for one that will allow you complete control of the backup/ synch settings. Set drive A to synch with drive B as a full copy, with deletions also copied through, set the backup to trigger on file changes and you will have what you want.

 

As a starter, I have used a program called Second Copy in this exact way, except that I ran the process manually. To be honest, I only ever run backups manually and these days I tend to use hard-drive cloning tools such as Acronis. Much easier, much quicker to run, both ways, and I can do it when I want rather than have some nag of a program twittering away at inopportune moments!

 

[Forehaven]

Thanks Bob. I checked out Acronis, it only supports windows.

 

I recalled reading here recently someone using Chronosync. (http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html)

 

Seems like a great program by the looks on the website. Does this do everything I need? In other words, I don't need any other third party software to setup the hd's as one, the primary disc, and the second, the mirrored backup?

 

[BobH]

I need to bow out and leave you to the tender mercies of the Mac Pack! I would think that the principals are the same, but when it comes to Mac software I know quite a bit about Windows software!

 

Good luck with it, hopefully someone will be along shortly.

 

[sidssp]

If you use Mac, which I do, you can use a build-in command rsync to make a mirrored drive. You can put that command in a shell script and run it as a cron job (cron is another build-in daemon which runs scripts at scheduled time).

 

You can also put it in a Applescript and schedule it to run from iCal.

 

Or you can just run it manually whenever you make changes to your music library.

 

I run it as a cron job at the end of each day.

 

If you use Windows, there is a version of rsync you can download. Just google "rsync for winodws".

 

I like rsync because it is well tested, very flexible, and it does block level differential transfer which speeds up copy a great deal.

 

 

[Forehaven]

Thanks Bob and Sidssp. I'm not computer genius, what you suggested sounds great, but I have no idea exactly what you said. Seems like Chronosync does the same thing, but for $40 bucks. Agreed?