Mirror Hard Disk in Windows 10/11 - Software Raid (2023)

Mirroring is writing to two hard drives at the same time, also known as Raid 1. Disk mirroring is primarily used to protect against disk failures.If one hard disk fails, the data is available on the second hard disk, the computer continues to work and you can start the configuration described here even after the failure.Duplicating the Windows partition is very easy, but do not set up the partitions to boot from the second hard drive in case of failure.This article is tooaccessibleifVideos from Youtube.

Generally

Some internet articles confuse mirroring with cloning, see also:Cloning, copying, imaging tools for hard drives. A mirror is something like the permanent cloning of the hard drive, i.e. the constant synchronization of both hard drives. For this reason, it would also be conceivable to clone a hard disk using “mirroring”. To do this, the mirror can be added and removed again as described here.

Windows includes a solution for mirroring disks. Also, many motherboard manufacturers offer the ability to mirror hard drives in the BIOS. In this case, the driver does the job and presents two mirrored drives as one to the operating system. Alternatively, mirroring can be set up in Windows when no version of Home is currently in use. Of course, this variant requires a little more system resources, but is hardware-independent.Disk mirroring in Windows is nothing new, Windows has been supporting it for decades.

Requirement: Dynamic disks

As a basis for mirroring, the hard disk must be converted into a dynamic disk. Originally, dynamic drives were an innovation, today they are more exotic and more of a relic from the past. Although the conversion of a BASIS hard disk to dynamic usually makes no difference in practice, the conversion should be considered briefly, as it cannot be easily reversed. reflect theThe Windows partition (c:) is initially a very simple thing and works almost by itself. Handling additional boot and system partitions is anything but self-explanatory. To prepare your computer for a primary hard drive failure, the system partitions must be created in the correct order. In order for the secondary hard disk to get the same partition IDs, it must first be dynamized last. Since mirroring drive C creates the partition on the second drive by itself, but it is not at the end of the drive by default, this is a chicken-and-egg problem. The only way I could solve the problem was to create a partition exactly the size of partition C on the second hard drive as a placeholder for the mirror and then delete it.

I originally described mirroring a legacy drive in this post. Since UEFI partition layouts are widely used today, I've adjusted the article. If you are still using legacy boot mode on your PC, you can change it to UEFI as follows:Change Windows 10 (Legacy) BIOS to UEFI Boot.

The easiest way to tell if EFI is being used is to use Disk Management. With UEFI, there is an EFI system partition at the beginning of the boot disk:

A prerequisite for mirroring the system drive is, of course, a second drive with sufficient storage space.

Setting up a Windows 10/11 mirror: UEFI boot

For a better overview I have summarized the individual steps:

Mirroring can be started from Disk Management:

When you launch Disk Management, the first thing you want to do is initialize the new disk for our mirror:

The primary hard disk partitions can be read out in Windows PowerShell with the "get-partition -DiskNumber 0" command:

PS C:\Windows\system32> get-partition -DiskNumber 0 DiskPath: \\?\scsi#disk&ven_msft&prod_virtual_disk#5&32d19c0&0&000000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}PartitionNumber DriveLetter Offset Size Type------- - ------ ----------- ------ ---- ----1 1048576 100 MB Sistema2 105906176 16 MB Reservado3 C 122683392 126,29 GB Básico4 135722434560 611 MB Erholung

If the partitions or their sizes are different, this must be taken into account for the following commands.

If the disk has already been converted to dynamic, the command returns an error:

get-partition: No MSFT_Partition object with DiskNumber property equal to "0" was found. Check the property value and try again. Line: 1 Character: 1+ Get-Partition -DiskNumber 0+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~ + CategoryInfo: ObjectNotFound: (0 : UInt32 ) [Get-Partition], CimJobException + FullyQualifiedErrorId: CmdletizationQuery_NotFound_DiskNumber,Get-Partition

The reason: Windows still does not support dynamic disk management via Windows PowerShell.The solution is the command prompt with the good old command: diskpart. Here is the output of disk after converting to dynamic:

DISKPART> select disk 0Disk 0 is now the selected disk.DISKPART> list partition Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- -------------- -- ------- ------- Partition 1 System 100MB 1024KB Partition 5 Dynamic Reserved 1024KB 101MB Partition 2 Reserved 15MB 102MB Partition 3 Dynamic Data 126GB 117MB Partition 4 Recovery 611 MB 126GB

Partition 5 was added when switching to dynamic: So "reserved" is 1MB smaller - 15MB instead of 16MB.

The secondary disk should not be switched to dynamic yet. If the disk is already dynamic, it can be converted to BASIC. To create the partitions, I compiled the following PowerShell commands:

Get-Partition -DiskNumber 1 | Remove-Partition #-Confirm:$FalseNew-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -Size 100MB -GptType "{c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b}" New-Partition -DiskNumber 1 -Size 16MB -GptType "{e3c9e314-0b8.c - -817d-f92df00215ae}"Neue Partition -DiskNumber 1 -Size $($(get-volume | Where-Object DriveLetter -eq c).size)New Partition -DiskNumber 1 -GptType "{de94bba4-06d1-4d40 -a16a - bfd50179d6ac}" -Maximale Größe verwenden

The partition for C drive will be created the same as the main C partition and will only serve as a placeholder, so the recovery partition can be created now and will have the same ID as the main drive.

As already mentioned, we switch hard disks to "dynamic" last, so that the layout of the partitions corresponds as closely as possible to the layout of the main hard disk.

The future C partition or its mirror is in the middle, so by deleting the previously created partition we will have free space in the same position:

Now comes the most important part, adding the reflection:

Windows now transfers all data blocks from drive C to the second drive in the background:

If both disks are synchronized, the status is shown as "Healthy":

Fill the EFI partition

So that the computer can also boot from the secondary disk later, I transfer all data from the EFI partition to the second disk partition

In Diskpart I assign the drive letter P. for the EFI partition of the primary disk: , for the partition of the secondary disk: S:

C:\Windows\system32>diskpartDISKPART> select disk 0 Disk 0 is now the selected disk.DISKPART> select partition 1Partition 1 is now the selected partition.DISKPART> assign letter=pDiskPart has successfully assigned drive letter or mount point.DISKPART > select disk 1Disk 1 is now the selected disk.DISKPART> select partition 1Partition 1 is now the selected partition.DISKPART> format fs=fat32 almost 100 percent doneDiskPart successfully formatted the volume.DISKPART> allocate letter= sDiskPart successfully assigned drive letter or mount point . exit

The BCD store can't be copied immediately, so I exported it, copied it and renamed it to BCD:

DISKPART> sairSaliendo de DiskPart...C:\Windows\system32>p:P:\>cd EFI\Microsoft\BootP:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>bcdedit /export P:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD2P:\ EFI \Microsoft\Boot>robocopy p:\ s:\ /e /r:0P:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>renomear S:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD2 BCDP:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>del P: \ EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD2

(see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/set-up-dynamic-boot-partition-mirroring)

The following commands delete the previously used drive letters P and S again:

P:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>c:C:\Windows\System32>diskpartMicrosoft DiskPart Version 10.0.22000.1DISKPART> select volume sDISKPART> removeDISKPART> select volume DISKPART> select volume pDISKPART> removeDiskPart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point.

Fill recovery partition

The following commands can be used to transfer the contents of the recovery partition from disk 0 to disk 1.Therefore, the drive letters must be reassigned for access.

DISKPART> select disk 0Disk 0 is now the selected disk.DISKPART> list partition Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- -------------- -- ------- ------- Partition 1 System 100MB 1024KB Partition 5 Dynamic Reserved 1024KB 101MB Partition 2 Reserved 15MB 102MB Partition 3 Dynamic Data 126GB 117MB Partition 4 Recovery 611 MB 126 GBDISKPART> select partition 4Partition 4 is now the selected partition.DISKPART> assign letter=pDiskPart has successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.DISKPART> select disk 1Disk 1 is now the selected disk .DISKPART> list partition Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ----------------------- - ----- - Partition 1 System 100MB 1024 KB Partition 5 Dynamic Reserved 1024 KB 101 MB Partition 2 Reserved 15 MB 102 MB Partition 3 Dynamic Data 126 GB 117 MB Partition 4 Recovery 612 MB 126 GBDISKPART > Select Partition 4 Partition 4 is now the selected partition DISKPART> fast format fs = ntfs lab el="winRE"DISKPART> assign letter=sexitc:\windows\sy stem32> robocopy p:\ s:\ /e /r:0

Finally, the drive letters can be removed again:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>diskpartMicrosoft DiskPart Version 10.0.22000.653Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. On the computer: TESTDISKPART > select volume sVolume 2 is the selected volume.DISKPART > removeDiskPart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point. .DISKPART> select volume pVolume 4 is the selected volume.DISKPART> removeDiskPart removed by clicking on the drive letter or mount point.

If everything works so far and the C partition is in sync, even the main drive can be erased. The secondary disk reports an error, but the computer can still be started with "F9".

Worst case: failure of the primary drive.

To simulate a drive failure, I removed the primary drive and set the boot order in the BIOS to the second drive.

0

I've tried a few things... I have tried the procedure described here several times. If you follow all the steps outlined in creating it, you should beable to start the computer with F9 at this point. If the PC still won't boot, the Windows setup media can be used to boot or repair the EFI partition:Windows 10/11 – Descarga Installation – Boot-DVD oder USB. With the Windows bootable media, it is even possible to create an EFI system partition for booting later. The EFI partition only needs to find space on the first 2.2 TB of the boot disk. For EFI partition creation information, see:Change Windows 10 (Legacy) BIOS to UEFI Boot.

After starting the PC, Disk Management shows us the lost disk:

If the disk is permanently unavailable, it can be permanently deleted with "Delete Mirror":

In principle, we return to the beginning of the article so that an additional hard disk can be used for duplication again:

startup repair

So that the computer does not boot permanently with F9, I repaired the boot files with bcdboot:

c:\windows\system32> diskpartDISKPART> select disk 0DISKPART> select partition 1DISKPART> Assign letter=y:exity:cd EFI\BootY:\EFI\Boot>bcdboot c:\windows /s y: /f UEFIBoot files created successfully.

Videos from Youtube

The content of this article is covered in the following YouTube video:

Frequently Asked Questions

What is disk mirroring?

With disk mirroring, data is written simultaneously to two disks, also called RAID1. The content of both hard drives is always identical.

What is the difference between disk cloning and disk mirroring?

The difference between cloning and mirroring is that cloning is a one-time transfer of the content to another hard drive. With mirroring, on the other hand, content is written to two hard disks simultaneously during operation. Two hard drives are installed and permanently synchronized so that the second hard drive can take over in the event of a failure. When cloning a hard drive, a second hard drive is usually only temporarily added to replace the original hard drive with another one or to create a backup.

Diploma

Mirroring system disks in Windows 10/11 increases PC availability and even protects against itcomplete failure of the primary hard drive.In addition, disk mirroring provides the ability to transfer data from one disk to another in real-time, similar to disk cloning:Clone disk, copy disk, create image, tools..