Mirror Folder - Does it have flaws?

[prasercat]

Does anyone have first hand experience with this program?

I am going to purchase a new custom computer from cyberpowerpc.com in the next month or so with two identical internal drives. Mirror Folder website indicates Raid 1 drives are necessary in order to have a real time total drive synchonization, so if the drive I am working from fails, I can just reboot using the other drive with no down time. It sounds great but is this reality or hype? Any other suggestions are also welcome.

Thanks in advance!

 

[TEL2002]

And how many times have you had a hard drive fail and needed a spare hard drive that you could immediately boot? How much extra are you paying for this amenity? Is the safety factor worth the added expense?

Since both drives (I assume) are operational all the time, wouldn't they tend to wear out about the same time?

 

[VegasWayne]

If you have two drives in a raid 1 array aren't they already mirrored? Why would you need additional software to do what a basic raid setup already does?

 

[prasercat]

And how many times have you had a hard drive fail and needed a spare hard drive that you could immediately boot? How much extra are you paying for this amenity? Is the safety factor worth the added expense?

Since both drives (I assume) are operational all the time, wouldn't they tend to wear out about the same time?

That's a good question. The answer is twice my hard drive failed since I have been an appraiser and it put me out of work for about 5 days dealing with a new operating system, compatibility issues, and softwares and then I still lost valuable data that was accumulated, even though I had a "back up drive" . However, not my appraisal files.

 

[rijman]

Does anyone have first hand experience with this program?

I am going to purchase a new custom computer from cyberpowerpc.com in the next month or so with two identical internal drives. Mirror Folder website indicates Raid 1 drives are necessary in order to have a real time total drive synchonization, so if the drive I am working from fails, I can just reboot using the other drive with no down time. It sounds great but is this reality or hype? Any other suggestions are also welcome.

Thanks in advance!

I am not familiar with Mirror Folder, but when my company had 10 appraisers 6-7 years ago we had a computer built for us with two mirror drives. The main hard drive went down once and we were right back up and running. The computer tech told us that he would build computers for larger companies with 10 mirror drives, which is nothing compared to how many times major corporations auto save their files and in different locations. The added cost of the mirror drives was insignificant to maintain our files and minimize down time.

 

[Tom Woolford]

I've been using it for quite some time, with excellent results. I don't "mirror" the drives but only use it for real time data backup. I've never had a drive fail, but If the OS goes Tango Uniform, more than likely the mirror will have the same problem. I like to wipe and refresh at least once a year, and for that mirror folder works well. For off site storage, I use Mozy.

 

[prasercat]

If you have two drives in a raid 1 array aren't they already mirrored? Why would you need additional software to do what a basic raid setup already does?

My understanding is that Mirror Folder in a "RAID-1" mode (there are different modes), has more functionality than just hardware RAID-1 and it can actually be used to synchonize multiple network drives and drives of different capacity. You can swap drives, so newer or less used drives can become the primary drive from time to time. When one drive fails, you replace it or connect another drive and the program is supposed to automatically get it synchronized. However, I always am suspicious of claims and if there is bias in the "hype".

 

[prasercat]

I've been using it for quite some time, with excellent results. I don't "mirror" the drives but only use it for real time data backup. I've never had a drive fail, but If the OS goes Tango Uniform, more than likely the mirror will have the same problem. I like to wipe and refresh at least once a year, and for that mirror folder works well. For off site storage, I use Mozy.

I understand that one could also use a RAID-1 drive with a "Data Disk", so the mirroring only applies to data. If the source drive fails, the data is there, but not the operating system and software, so that is not what I want. It seems to me, there is still significant downtime with this alternative. I'll look into Mozy, I use retrospective for backups right now to an external drive.

 

[prasercat]

I am not familiar with Mirror Folder, but when my company had 10 appraisers 6-7 years ago we had a computer built for us with two mirror drives. The main hard drive went down once and we were right back up and running. The computer tech told us that he would build computers for larger companies with 10 mirror drives, which is nothing compared to how many times major corporations auto save their files and in different locations. The added cost of the mirror drives was insignificant to maintain our files and minimize down time.

That is reassuring. Do you know, was it just hardware RAID or was it a software RAID?

 

[VegasWayne]

I had a computer with four drives in a raid-5 configuration. They were only 40GB drives, so when the first one failed after ten years I just replaced the whole thing. Most new computers have SATA raid built-in so you don't need to buy a separate raid controller. It is just a matter of setting the computer up properly.