hardrive cloning

 
cloning--  is just duplicating a harddrive to either a cd rom or to another 
harddrive.  just to back up a drive so you dont have to reinstall windows 
then drivers and programs.. yada yada.. so it makes it easier to format 
a computer and quicker.
 
there are a few ways of cloning.  either slave a harddrive on a computer. 
set jumpers of primary drive to master,   then put the jumpers on the sec-
ond drive as slave.  and then you have two harddrives on your computer. 
you can get a ( USB to IDE ) adapter. basically a plug that hooks to any 
internal drive that you can run from a USB port.    or you can just make a 
image of the drive to backup. then copy the image to a dvdrom to make 
a boot dvd to restore computer. etc.  you can also buy pricey devices to 
backup a drive with a touch of a button.    or there is equipment to get to 
duplicate  drives very fast.  this is for companies that program large net-
works with many computers. quite often. you dont need it.

all you need is  cloning and  cd burning software.       there is alot of free 
software out there to use.  or dos imaging installing software.  to restore 
the drive.   after a format.      easiest way is getting windows cloning soft-
ware and slaving a drive.   i will list a few programs down below.  I highly 
recommend ultimate boot cd. it is a bootable cd with all the tools you will 
ever need. its a iso file. you will need a cd copier and software for it..

those up there are for dos and while booting system.. this freeware prog is for inside windows it clones your drive and makes a restore disk. to boot with.. pretty tight... download it here..

and here is a site that shows you pictures of all the insides of a hard drive. it shows you pictures as he takes the drive apart and tells you how they work and what they do for the drive..

what is raid & how do i install it

raid is two harddrives working together as one. purpose of that it keeps data from going corrupt over time. it is very good for having a server. data on harddrives gets corrupt over time.

all you need is two or more identical harddrives. and a raid controller. you can check to see if your motherboard has a raid controller. by looking at your manual. if not you can purchase a raid controller.

then you simply hook the harddrives up the same you would two harddrives. then go into bios and change from ide or sata to raid. then depending on the manufacture of your raid controller you press a combination of keys to access the raid setup menu. for intel it is ctrl + I on the keyboard. then you select which harddrives you want to raid together. if your unsure unhook any other drives at that time. and just have your two drives you want to raid. raid stands for redundant array of independant drives.