Advise Please (SSD Image Backup Plan)

Hello all, I would like to get some input on how my SSD-HHD "3rd party" RAID1-like backup plan would work.

Here's the layout of my plan:

Objective:
To plan a safe and accurate way to image create my SSD to another HDD, in case of a SSD-failure, I can use that HDD as my main Boot-OS until I can get another SSD.

Components used in Plan:
Windows 7 Home
Intel SSD 510 Series 120gig
Seagate 2TB HDD
Arconis True Image Home 2011 ( http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ )

Information:
Intel SSD 510 Series
- My main boot-drive with Win7 and static software (Firefox, Sony Vegas 9 Pro, etc)
Seagate 2TB HDD
- One primary partition
- Contains games, media files, swap files and "My Document" files (redirected from SSD to HDD to lower read/write usage on SSD)


Plan:
I was thinking of creating a new partition on my HDD (200gig) and use Arconis True Image Home 2011 to use the "Disk Image" feature to mirror the SSD.

This way if SSD ever dies (which I hope won't happen for a few years) I can just tell my mobo to boot from my HDD (which obviously have everything updated from SSD) until I can get a new SSD.


Concerns:
01) HDD Partition
I only have one partition on my HDD, but looking at Windows 7 Disk Management, I can "Shrink Volume" which I assume mean I can create a separate Partition? If so, is it safe and won't affect any current data I have on the HDD (media files, etc). I don't have Partition Magic or anything, which is why I looked under Win7 Disk Management first to see if they have anything like that.

I do know I want to keep a separate booting partition 200gig so it can "image" the SSD and I can use as backup booting if needed.


02) SSD - HDD "3rd Party" RAID1 plan
As my plan stated, especially those who do use Arconis, is it viable and does it work? Arconis is pretty good price for $30, but would like some users' input for those who are well-experienced in it to see if its a viable plan.


I may have more questions but I guess these are the main concerns right now.

Much appreciated for any help.

-LL

 

The only comment I would have, and I am not 100% sure about this is that I think a bootable partition has to be your primary partition. If you were to shrink and create a new partition, the new partition would be an extended one. Therefor if your SSD died and you tried to boot from your 1TB drive it would try to boot from the partition that has your games and files on. As for shrinking your drive that should be fine. you shouldnt loose anything. Give it a go then disconnect your SSD and see if it boots.

 

I see, thanks for the response, been late in replying since I was busy.

But today, I just checked my motherboard and it has an USB-HDRIVE boot option.

So can do I this then since risking to create a partition on my media drive is already risky:

NEW PLAN: SSD to USB-HDD Image Backup Plan

01) Have my USB-HDD connected to my USB3 port
02) Use Acronis True Image to create an Image of my SSD to that stand-alone USB-HDD drive (like RAID1 in a way)


That way if my SSD dies (which, again, won't happen for years), I already got a bootable USB-HDD to use (which is an exact image RAID1 style of my SDD) until I can get a new SSD.


Would that work?

Also, how do you recreate an image from that same USB-HDD to my new "SSD" if that is the case too?

 

TBH I think you are over engineering things a little bit. The other issue is that your backup will only be as uptodate as the last time you ran the image. I dont know big your drives are but here is my suggestion (and how I run my systems) On the local drive (in your case the SSD) I have my OS and all my programs installed and that is it. I have move the document libraries to a separate disk (in my case a NAS enclosure) in your case it would be your secondary hard disk inside your PC.

As SSDs will slowly wear out over time with every read/write (I assume you know this hence your concern) it makes sense to save documents and commonly written/overwritten files on a traditional disk. This split methodology will help preserve your disk.

Next up your backup plan could look something like this.

Once you have installed all your software you create a drive image file with Acronis and save the image file on your secondary drive with your documents. You then use something like Cobian backup (which is a backup utility rather than an imaging tool to carry out a weekly backup of the data on your secondary drive onto your USB.

This way if your SSD fails you can format your external drive, restore your SSD image to your USB and just live without backing up for a week til your new SSD turns up.

If your secondary disk fails you buy a new secondary hard disk and rebuild your data that cobian backed up.

My personal routine is subtly different in that my data is on external NAS which is syncronised with my laptop so my laptopis acting as a backup. If the HD in my main rig dies, I buy a new one reinstall Windows and software then re-map my network drive and im sorted. If my NAS drive dies i replace the disk and restore the data from my laptop.

Whatever happens I can recover from complete system failure in about an hour-hour and a half once I have replacement disk.