On 17/09/2010 22:52, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Timothy Murphy wrote:
Marcelo M. Garcia wrote:
I was thinking of copying the old root partition with sudo cp -a -P /* /mnt/hd
I think the command rsync is a better approach for this task. It has much more features, for example, you can exclude certain files.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks for all the responses.
Further to my query, I'm wondering if one can safely copy partitions (in particular the root partition / ) while the system is running.
The reason that I ask is that I'm slightly afraid the machine will not re-boot into single-user mode with the present OS on the sick disk.
telinit 1 doesn't require a reboot and shuts down most things which could update disk while leaving the platters spinning. I understand your fears about it not restarting, I've had problems like that in the past and now I at least try to extract as much info as I can from the sick drive before risking powering it down.