My wonderful new Windows 7 computer crashed today. I’m not sure what happened, but I think one drive of my Software RAID setup started to fail, and instead of using the good drive to keep things correct, it used the failed drive and started trying to match the good drive to the failed one. All I know is that I have two supposedly mirrored drives that are quite different,and neither one has many of my important files. Windows will barely boot, many things don’t work, and it says it is not a “Genuine” copy.
What a mess! I’m going to have to wipe and reinstall. This time I’m going to use hardware RAID — it’s built into the motherboard, so it shouldn’t be hard.
Meanwhile, in the corruption, most of my data files are gone from both hard drives. All my Thunderbird email files, and most critically all my C++ files that I have spent thousands of hours creating.
Fortunately I set up a Mozy account a few months ago, and it is going to save my sanity.
Mozy is an online back-up utility. Every night around 2:00am all of the important, impossible to replace, files get backed up to Mozy’s server. I have about 26GB up there right now, and when I just checked, all those critical files I was so worried about are as fresh as last night.
Boy I thought that setting up a RAID 1 mirrored system would prevent data loss. It looks like in this case it just made it worse. Hopefully the next time, with hardware RAID, it will do better. But in any event I will continue to use Mozy.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Richard // Jul 22, 2010 at 5:47 am
What a bad news, good news story! I have not yet had to use Mozy to restore any files, but I’m sure glad I use it.
Sure strange about RAID messing you up. When you learn more about why I would like to hear about it. I use hardware RAID built into my mother board and have had no issues.
2 Donna // Jul 22, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Hooray for Mozy! I use it, too.
3 Don // Jul 22, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I’ve been trying to get Betty to organize all her files so we too can use Mozy. I do have a 1 TB NAS that has all my important files but Betty doesn’t really have anything. She will be very sad if she doesn’t do something before she loses it all.
As for RAID I set that up on one of my Gigabyte machines and had a big problem. I was going to do an upgrade so I tried to Ghost the system as a backup and for some reason both drives became corrupt. Not sure if it was the Gigabyte hardware RAID that caused it or something else.
Bottom line is it’s best to have something beyond the RAID for disaster.
4 Donna // Jul 22, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Since I started using roach traps, I hardly ever have to get out my RAID anymore.
5 Daryl // Jul 22, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Well, I’m almost back where I was. It takes Mozy a long time to download 26 GB, so it will probably be tomorrow sometime before everything is restored, but it’s coming in.
I have most of my programs reinstalled and reconfigured. It took most of the day.
I bought a terabyte external HD last night too. I’ll try to be careful about keeping a local backup, but Mozy is staying installed. So even if my house burns down, or all my computer equipment is stolen, I will still have a backup.
I haven’t figured out what happened. I only know that both drives that were supposed to be mirror copies were different. Some files were missing from one drive especially, and files that were there often had different dates and sizes. Most of my personal data was totally gone from both drives.
Something happened with the SW RAID controller. I’m hoping the HW controller on the mother board will be more reliable! What’s the use of having RAID if the system can’t survive a hard drive glitch?
6 Daryl // Jul 23, 2010 at 11:36 am
The jury is still out on Mozy.
All my files are there, and I can pretty easily go out and grab a particular one if I need it. And I was able to restore a couple of vital directories pretty quickly.
But there’s still no sign of the several GB of music and photos I have up there. The global restore download seems to be getting slower and slower, and when I restarted my computer Mozy seems to have restarted the download, resulting in lots and lots of duplicate files.
Emphasizing again that it is still all there in Mozy, and I’m sure eventually I will get it all (up to one month from now), I have to say that the restore operation is not painless.
7 Donna // Jul 23, 2010 at 4:53 pm
You should give that feedback to Mozy. When I had a problem with my backup once, I filed a ticket with them and they were extremely helpful, and even followed up a couple times after things were resolved. I think their customer service dept is excellent, and with new competition coming out, I bet they want to do all they can to please their clients.
8 Richard // Jul 24, 2010 at 2:03 pm
With my satellite situation my only full recovery option would be to have them send me a DVD. Perhaps that would be easier for you too, but with your high speed connection I’m sure it will eventually get there.