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Thread: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

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    Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    Hello,

    If I were to configure my second HDD in my computer as a backup drive for my first, could I also use it to store stand-alone files?

    Basically I have about 500GB of data on my 1TB system drive. I want to back that up onto my second drive. However, could I also use my second drive as say, a scratch drive whilst video editing, or to record footage from a screen recorder like FRAPS onto? Or must it be exclusively for backup?

    Thanks,
    Adam

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    Re: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    Depends what you mean by backup to be honest.

    If you have 500GB of data on a 1TB system drive (C:), and a 1TB backup drive (we'll call it E:), then you could set up some software to backup that data onto the backup drive, in the folder E:\Backup.

    That would leave 500GB spare on drive E:, and then you could use E:\Fraps or E:\Temp as you wished, any folder.

    If you wanted to make E: a direct mirror of C:, then obviously that wouldn't work. Also, it's not really a backup since fire, theft, electrical spike or PSU failure, SATA corruption from the mobo might wipe out both drives simultaneously.

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    Re: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Depends what you mean by backup to be honest.

    If you have 500GB of data on a 1TB system drive (C:), and a 1TB backup drive (we'll call it E:), then you could set up some software to backup that data onto the backup drive, in the folder E:\Backup.

    That would leave 500GB spare on drive E:, and then you could use E:\Fraps or E:\Temp as you wished, any folder.

    If you wanted to make E: a direct mirror of C:, then obviously that wouldn't work. Also, it's not really a backup since fire, theft, electrical spike or PSU failure, SATA corruption from the mobo might wipe out both drives simultaneously.
    Ok thank you, I meant the first option, as a backup rather than a mirror.

    And yes that is true. The primary function is as a drive to record files too using Dxtory. But I figured I'd probably only have a maximum of 500GB of data on it at any one time, so I might as well use the rest to "back up" my C: drive against pure HDD failure.

    Thanks for the response!!

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    Re: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    Yeah, I don't see why not.

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    Re: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    An harddrive is a harddrive, you can do whatever you want with it, put data on it, leave it empty, whatever.

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    Re: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    Lol agree with IronWarrior. You can should be able to put stand alone files one

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    Re: Can I use a backup hard drive for storage as well?

    @snootyjim, thanks for your explaination.

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