paulmd@efn.org wrote:
> On Feb 13, 7:20 pm, "brett" <acco...@cygen.com> wrote:
>> I bought my laptop in August 2004. It's been running fine but I'd
>> like to have a mirrored HD. The harddrive for this machine is $180 -
>> $210. However, I can get a refurbished for $135. The brand new HDs
>> are probably three years old since I have to buy the same model. Will
>> a refurbished HD last as long as a new one or longer?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Brett
>
> Mirrored hard drives in a laptop? I think perhaps the terminology is
> mixed up. There's only a handful of laptops that support multiple hard
> drives internally, let alone have RAID support. If by mirrored, you
> instead mean a system with a USB hard drive enclosure, like perhaps
> Acronis true image, or Ghost, then there's no requirement for
> identical drives for that. Nor even a need to match capacities
> exactly. As long as there's room for the data.
>
>

Your point about not needing identical HDs is a good one. There are
other ways of putting the data (cloning) onto another HD without using
USB. BootIt NG http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/
allows the creation of an image to CD/DVD and pasting it to another HD
without booting into Windows. There may be others that do this as well.