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Raid 1 or Disk Image with SSD Drive

I have built a new system for work. I have two 128 GB SSD drives and a 256 GB SSD drive.

In the past I have used Hardware based Raid 1 on mechanical drives and it has saved my butt many times. The primary advantage is that I do not have to reinstall and activate all of my software (much of which is propritary & requires manual activation & a fee) upon a drive failure.

My plan was to use Software Based Raid 1 on the 128 GB SSD's--due to the lack of trim support on hardware based Raid 1 (to the best of my knowledge), and the 256 GB for other frequently accessed software and data. Now I am left wondering if maybe a daily disk image would not be better due to the possibility of increased preformance.

FYI, I also do file backups to an external Hard Drive and NAS. I am running Windows 7, Asus P8Z77-V Pro, 16 GB RAM, i7 3.5 Ghz processor.

Please provide comments/suggestions/opinions regarding the best backup solutions. I welcome comments on file backup solutions, but my primary concern is protection against drive failure without having to reinstall the OS and Software. I use Acronis.

Thanks!!!

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Aaron Tomosky

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David

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Thanks for the suggestions. I have no data on the drives yet, so I decided to try the mirroring option first. However, I ran into a problem. The system reserves a 100mb partition for bitlocker and system files. I can not get this to mirror, and don't feel comfortable doing away with it. Any suggestions on this issue? Thanks!

David

you need a few MB free at the end of the drive. Shrink partitions down a bit to free up space then try again.

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ASKER

I shrinked the reserved partition by the total available (16mb). I still get the error "no extents were found for the plex". Any other ideas? Thanks!!!

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Thanks