Mirror a Hard Drive
From music libraries and family photos to important documents and operating files, losing a hard drive can be a logistical and emotional nightmare. In a few simple steps, however, you can mirror a hard drive -- creating a back up copy identical to your main drive. Mirroring a hard drive will protect your important files in the event of a computer virus or hardware failure.
Steps
- Decide if you want to create a mirrored drive on your existing hard drive or on a separate, external drive.
- Download or purchase the necessary software. There are many inexpensive software solutions that will streamline the process down to just a few clicks. Choose a software program that provides a reliable backup and disaster recovery of systems, applications, settings and personal files.
- If you want to create a mirrored drive on your existing hard drive, you will first need to partition your hard drive. Right click the ‘computer’ icon on desktop and Choose "Manage".
- From Management Console, Select "Disk Management" in left pane. It will display all disks. Click appropriate disk to create partition and follow the prompts.
- After creating partition format your partition. This will enable the partition for copying data. (Usually when you partition with Disk management" option, It gives you an option to format created partition automatically or to leave partition without formatting.
- Load and run your mirror software. The software provides a user-friendly interface that will guide you through the installation and set-up process.
- Choose the drive you want to mirror from the list of available drives. In most cases, you will want to select the C drive.
- Select a location to save your mirror copy. This location will either be your newly-partitioned hard drive or an external drive.
- Click the “Start” button to begin the mirroring process. Depending on the size of your files and the write speed of your hard drive, the mirroring process may take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
- Test the new drive to ensure your files are successfully copied. If you mirrored your entire drive, you can test the new drive by removing the old drive. Your computer should successfully boot up from the new drive.
Tips
- Chose a mirroring software program that allows for incremental backups. This will ensure you can roll back system, files, and folders to any point in time.
- There are several good disk mirroring programs available from Acronis, Paragon and Norton. Check online reviews to see which program best suit your needs and to research software options.
- Some software companies also allow back up to a remote, secure FTP site and secure online data access. If you have a lot of sensitive files or are considered about theft or physical loss of your mirror drive, you may want to consider this option when purchasing mirroring software.
- When mirroring a hard drive for restoration, you must select a destination drive that has the same, if not greater, storage capacity as your existing drive. If your files take up a lot of space, you will want to use a separate, external drive for your mirror drive rather than partitioning your existing hard drive. Depending on your needs, the most affordable option may be an external USB or Firewire hard drive.
Warnings
- A mirrored hard drive is only as useful as the last time you backed it up; any new data will not be included. Many software mirroring programs include a feature that automatically backs up new data on a weekly or monthly basis (known as “Set and Forget” scheduling). When selecting a software package, this is an important feature to consider.
Things You’ll Need
- A partitioned hard drive or external hard drive
- Backup software program
