UPDATE May 2007: The Dell DataSafe setup discussed in the following post saved the day on one occasion. But there have been numerous problems. The factory default backup partition is not big enough, and Ghost does not manage backup storage well. It fills up and stops working and doesn't tell you. You have to check the logs.

I also had problems getting it to automatically consolidate/remove incremental backups and create fresh checkpoints, leading to problems with the backup partition filling up. Dell was not able to help me resolve these issues and Symantec does not support Ghost sold through OEMs (nor do either provide software updates). So I decided to go with an external USB drive for backups. As part of that plan, I was going to repartition the RAID-1 drives into one large partition and eliminate the backup partition.

I made a Ghost backup to the USB drive, repartitioned the drive, and attempted to restore from the backup. The standalone Ghost recovery environment would not recognize the USB drive. So I basically had to reinstall XP and all my software, then I was able to get to the USB drive backup and do selective restores of my current data using Ghost.

After all these problems, I decided Ghost was not worth the hassle. I switched to Acronis True Image Home 10. This software is far more flexible and easier to use and seems technically superior. It has better storage managment that lets you set rules based on space, number of incremental backups, or number of days worth of backups, and automatically cleans up and consolidates as necessary. The scheduler is much more intuitive and easier to use, and it can send e-mail notifications of all operations. (I think Ghost may have this feature, too, but I don't recall if I ever got it working.)

In addition, I attached a Seagate 500GB eSATA drive to use for backups. This is faster and hopefully more reliable than an USB drive. We'll see.

So now I have a RAID-1 mirrored 500GB logical hardrive (using two 500GB drives) on my desktop PC (which is a little over half full owing to 134GB of digital music ripped from my entire CD collection and 105GB of digital photo files) and a 500GB external eSATA backup with daily incremental backups run and managed automatically by Acronis True Image. I tested a full standalone recovery of the hard drive from the eSATA drive and it worked fine. Hopefully this will be a better setup going forward. We'll see.

So that's the rest of the story, read more about the Dell DataSafe hardware in the following original post...

As mentioned earlier, I had another disk crash last week. This is the second time in less than a year. The first was probably caused by lightning (it completely wiped out two drives). This most recent crash may have been caused by brain-damaged OS/software (something stomped on the boot sector of my C: drive) but I was able to repair it enough to get all my stuff off both drives, plus I had backups of everything critical.

This time last week, I was looking at getting a new hard drive (or taking a chance I could get away with just reformatting the failed drive) and reinstalling Windows XP, compilers and dozens of related software development tools, publishing and graphics applications, and all the usual Microsoft Office and other assorted software.

Because we make our living with our PCs and require a lot of "stuff", rebuilding a desktop workstation is an all day proposition at best. (Our checklist of things to install and notes on where to find all the CDs, archived files, license/activation keys, versioning info, service updates, and other assorted parts and pieces is three pages long -- just for the compile-and-distribute environment.)

In looking at our records, my desktop was purchased over three years ago. Thinking maybe the HD controller or something else may have been damaged from the lightning incident, that it was probably time to upgrade anyway, and realizing I had to go through the major hassle of rebuilding either way, I decided to shop for a new PC. (Our theory, which has held true for nearly 20 years now, is that a new PC with the latest technology costs $3000, and it will be obsolete in 3 years.)

I went with a Dell Dimension XPS-400 from their "Home/Home Office" store, configured with a 3Ghz Pentium D, 4GB of RAM, and two 500GB SATA disk drives. (This is extreme overkill for most people, but like I said, we make our living with our PCs and need lots of horsepower and flexibility.) The XPS is essentially the same as the Dimension 9150 from the “Small Business” store where we usually get stuff, but the XPS had slightly more configuration flexibility. Besides, "XPS" just sounds cooler. Plus, it came in about $100 cheaper, mainly because you can order it without the "free" monitor that comes with the 9150.

These PCs are available with Dell’s new "DataSafe" feature, which I ordered. It consists of a new Intel "Matrix Storage" RAID-enabled hard disk controller with related BIOS and driver software, and a copy of Norton Ghost 10. You could set all this up yourself (assuming you have a RAID disk controller of some kind or want to install one), but having it already setup and ready to go from the factory seemed appealing.

I was hoping DataSafe would be completely transparent and automatic out of the box. It almost is. The two 500GB SATA drives were configured as a RAID-1 (mirrored) array, with all the appropriate BIOS and driver settings. The drives appear to the operating system as a single drive, with two partitions. The main C: partition is where you put everything as usual, and a D: backup partition is where it saves Norton Ghost backup images.

The only thing you have to do is run Ghost the first time, setup a backup schedule, and run a full image backup to establish the first "recovery point." After that, Ghost will make incremental backups daily, and recreate a full image copy weekly or whatever schedule you set. These options are all configurable in Ghost. You can also schedule full backups to a network or external USB drive for even more protection.

What you end up with is a 346GB C: drive and a 116GB D: drive for backup images (Ghost compresses the disk images by about 3 to 1). All of it is mirrored automatically so you can keep running if one of the hard drives fails. It is supposed to report failures, and automatically rebuild the mirror if you replace a failed drive. The RAID setup protects against hardware failures, while Ghost backup images provide extra protection against "logical" failures such as a virus attack or brain-damaged software/OS corruption of your hard drive.

(RAID doesn't protect you from "logical" disk errors. The hard disk controller will dutifully write the corruption to all protected disks as instructed by the software. That's what it's supposed to do - write sectors to the RAID array as instructed as reliably as possible.)

If you’re a serious geek, you could also reconfigure it all yourself with a RAID-0 (striped) partition for performance and another RAID-1 (mirrored) partition for reliability if you wanted.

It probably takes a little more technical know-how than expected (or advertised), but Dell provides a decent cookbook summary to guide you through setting it up. The new version of Ghost is also a lot nicer than I remember, too. You can open backup images and recover individual files or folders, instead of having to restore the entire drive image. This is a nice feature that gives you an extra level of backup for "oops" type mistakes like deleting a file or recovering an earlier version of a file you didn’t mean to overwrite.

(I’m probably going to get Ghost for our other desktops and notebooks and use a portable USB drive to image them from time to time.)

For the "uh-oh" situations such as getting your boot sector stomped on, recovery is supposed to be as simple as restoring from your latest Ghost "recovery point" image. That sounds a lot easier than what I just went through rebuilding my workstation. Hopefully I won’t need it, but if I do I’ll let you know how it goes.

("Hopefully" in the sense that I will get a new PC before I need it, but recognizing the undeniable fact that all hard drives will fail eventually.)

I predict that "DataSafe" or similarly packaged technology will be a standard feature (or at least an option) on most if not all desktop PCs in the near future. I’d recommend at least taking a look at it.