So, what I think you are referring to is a RAID configuration – where data is simultaneously stored on 2 disks at the same time so that if one disk fails the other can take over and the user experiences no downtime. This is used in pretty much every server ever made and nearly every company worth anything will have their servers set up in this way – it reduces strain on IT departments as they then have time to fix the problem rather than having people at their heels while it doesn’t work..
However, I would not recommend this as a may of making a backup of your data – with a backup you want records stored incase everything gets corrupted and then you need to restore from it. if you only have an exact copy of your hard drive, with all the corrupted data included, this is not going to help. You just end up with 2 sets of identical corrupted data.
What I use (on windows) is a program called All-Way Sync. I have it set up so that it runs a full backup of my laptop every week (The rate at which I make most changes – if it goes wrong it will take me 15 mins to get a week’s changes back). I rotate the folder it backs-up to using 4 different sync programs so that I have records from this week, last week, the week before that and the week before that.
I store all the data on a local NAS drive on my network (which it itself uses RAID) and on a portable hard drive as well..
This way I know that I A) Always have a backup and B) Always have a copy of the backup with me when I am DJing. It is in fact possible for me to use the portable hard drive as the main hard drive for my laptop – so if my main hard drive goes dodgy I can boot from the portable one, and it behaves like normal only a bit slower.. And then I can sort out the issue when I get home.
That’s how I set mine up. You can do the same (or similar) if you want, but it requires a decent level of technical understanding to do most of it – but the actual setting up the backups is easy. I run them every Sat night and then I know that my data is safe..
bob6397
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