Another option might be dd. I used it when I was setting up a cluster. I had all the same brand of disk so that may make a difference.
I used: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb later, > -----Original Message----- > From: Kent Borg [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 10:38 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: replacing my primary hard drive > > > On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 10:50:32AM -0400, David Yates wrote: > > > My 80 GB primary linux hard drive (dev/hda) containing / , /boot/ > > and swap is dying. I have purchases a replacement drive of the same > > size, but made by a different manufactuer. I am wanting to avoid a > > reinstall. I need specific instructions for duplicating the old > > dying hda on to the new drive. > > I am using the grub boot loader. > > Specifically, I need instructions for making the new blank drive > > identical to the old failing drive and making sure I can boot off of > > it using grub once the old drive is removed and the new one remains. > > I haven't done this, so I don't have exact instructions. Someone > maybe will post more exact instructions, but before following them, I > suggest you carefully understand what they mean anyway, so in the mean > time, start firing up some man pages and see if you can make sense of > the following steps: > > - Physically install new disk (probably as and IDE slave with old > disk as master), > > - Partition new disk to match partitions of old disk (using fdisk, > which will require a bit of learning, the "?" command is useful), > > - Make new file systems in those partitions to match old > (using mke2fs > if you are using ext2 or ext3, other for others), > > - Copy everything over to new disk, partition by partition (using cp > with -a switch), > > - Shutdown, unplug old disk, plug new disk in its place (probably as > master now), see if it will boot. > > > A few catches: > > - Some data doesn't like being copied by file-by-file from one disk > to another. Examples are database files and some e-mail server > programs' spool files (like qmail), so stop and wonder what such > things you might be running and see how they say you should back up > and restore their data. I am pretty sure a stock Red Hat > installation used in unelaborated ways, won't have problems, but if > you have customized it much, you need to think about your > customization. > > - Disks are pretty cheap these days. If you are running a recent > version of Red Hat, consider getting another 80 GB disk and setting > it up with the new one you already have in a software raid 1 > configuration. This is a fully redundant configuration where each > disk has a complete copy of everything. Also, raid 1 is faster > than a single disk on reading data and no slower than a single disk > on writing. It will protect you in the future. Yes, it will > complicate the steps you need to complete now (roughly: build a > single disk version of a dual disk raid 1, copy data across, remove > old disk, put in second new disk, partition it for being part of > your raid 1, add new disk to array and raid software automatically > brings it up to date in background). You want to put the two raid > 1 disks on different IDE controllers to get the speed (I share one > with my-mostly-idle-CD-ROM for mostly-high-performance, still on > the cheap), but most motherboards have two controllers. For > software raid 1 you don't need any special raid hardware. > > > Good luck, > > -kb, the Kent who will be watching for reports. > > > > -- > redhat-list mailing list > unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list > -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
