Damon L. Chesser wrote:
Alan Chandler wrote:
On Sunday 03 September 2006 23:23, Marty wrote:
Marty wrote:
Kaspar Fischer wrote:
Hi list,
I need to replace my boot disk as it starts failing (with bad
blocks).
What is the easiest way to obtain, on a new harddrive (at least as
large as the old one), an exact copy of the root file system and
swap partition?
Never touch a running system -- so my intention is to *copy* the
drive instead of installing a new Debian system.
Thanks and regards,
Kaspar
If for example you have two identical hard drives /dev/hda and
/dev/hdb, with your root partition on /dev/hda, and you don't have
any bad blocks on either drive, then you can make a perfect sector-
-by-sector mirror using "cp /dev/hda /dev/hdb"
Addendum: I posted in haste. Having re-read your message, since your
case involves both bad blocks and non-identical drives, I would
probably
opt for rsync as described below after manually setting up the
partitions
on the target drive.
One other suggestion. If, before you make the copy you set up the
new drive as a single element of a raid 1 raid array, then replace
the failing disk and add the replacement in as the second element to
this array, you will then have a permanent hot standby system.
That is something I have just done, although I have a separate boot
partition, and you have to independently store the boot block on to
both drives (I use grub - which is very easy).
There is some good articles on the web with step by step instructions
- I can't locate them right now, but a bit of googling will find them
I have one such how to at www.damtek.com the direct url is
http://www.damtek.com/2006/05/raid-and-boot-dir_07.html I wrote is
specifically for helping me learn RHEL, but it works for Debian
AFAIK. It will certainly walk you through duplication the grub MBR,
so that you will boot even if you loose the HD that currently holds
your MBR (assuming that /boot and your MBR are both on the same
partition, ie NOT a dual boot system with windows on the first
partition). I hope that will help.
Addendum:
In the OP's case, just make sure you do not make the failing HD part of
a raid, you will loose all your data! If you go this route, like the
above poster said, make the new HD a raid1, only one member and then
copy the old HD data onto it. Just trying to be extra careful with
someone else's data and avoid any misunderstanding.
--
Damon L. Chesser
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