[Leaplist] can I clone my hard drive

[Fred Moore]

William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> Kevin Anderson wrote:
>> You can copy it.  But you may need to revisit lilo or grub, whichever
>> you use (I'd assume grub).
>>
>> Be careful with switches.  It might take a try or two.  Don't follow
>> symlinks, preserve permissions, I remember something about special
>> devices (/dev/tty01 or /dev/null, etc) but not the particular
>> switched you need.
>>
>> Doing a copy rather than a "ghost" will allow you to not need to
>> worry about the partition or hard drive sizes.  If you want to
>> change, now's the time. 
>>
>> Also Reiser, EXT3, etc, it won't matter.  I'd likely recommend
>> walking away from Reiser.  I think it's been murdered.  Even Suse has
>> sent it away for life.  The jury is still deciding on it's fate
>> elsewhere.
>>
>> :)
>>
>> Kev.
>
> I 2nd the motion on ReiserFS :-). Lose it, go to ext3 (won't be able
> to clone, but you said the home drive was the most important, probably
> no need to clone that anyway), just set up an ext3 FS on your new
> drive & 'cp -r'/tar/whatever you like to get the data across.
>
>
> -- 
>
> 	William A. Mahaffey III
>
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 	"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
> 	 ever devised by man."
>                            -- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
>   
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>   
I --- 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 the ReiserFS stuff..  go to ext3... it just
works..   I went the Reiser route one time it lasted for about 5 weeks..
before going back.   Errors and crashes...   as for spinwrite...  that
will most likely fix the drive problem..  assuming its just bad
sectors..   Many of us have spinwrite with us at the installfest..  but
it takes a while to run..   I just used it to verify 4-250 gig drives..
last month took about 9 hours each..    I found no errors so I trust
these drives..  they were low hour pulls..

I highly suggest you look into smartmontools.. here is a link to a good
article about it
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983

I have been using this information since I first had a hard disk problem
in Linux.. since using it I know in advance if a problem is occurring at
the hardware level.. and have quite a lot of time to plan on the fix. 

just a suggestion.. but to me data is critical...  thats why I run an
rsync job (/home/fmoor) to my server every hour with --nodelete ...

I have also learned over the years to put /home/fmoor  on a separate
partition.  That way I can work on the operating system all I want with 
my /home partition unmounted...  or mounted ro..   It also makes it
easier to completely change the distro if I want..   Dam I seem to
remember doing this way back in the AIX, Sun admin days..   Some things
are just such good ideas..  I suggest you learn to not just take the
distro suggestion of  "use entire hard disk"  and yea I know that disks
have become more reliable over the years.. but its my data..  and they
do use movable parts..  I not only get to create my data it I get to
protect it from harm.. 

Guess I should explain further..  assuming I have a 120 gig drive.. give
the install the first 20 gig.. let it do a full install along with a
swap space..  I even create my user fmoor...  so now I have a full
operating system that is contained in the first 20 gig partition with
100 gig (- swap) available..   I then manually partition the remaining
space into one partition and then mount it over /home/fmoor.   This
gives me the flexibility to unmount the partition mounted over
/home/fmoor and still run without my data for testing or what ever..  
its a simple entry into fstab..   I can then reinstall my distro or
change in relative safety just remove the manual fstab entry first..  
then remount after you are done playing..

Fred


-- 
free as linux, http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html
Fred/WD8KNI