[CentOS] A questiong about replacing my failing drive

Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob at suespammers.org
Sun Jun 12 00:53:43 UTC 2005


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On Sat, Jun 11, 2005 at 03:58:31PM -0700, Jerry57 (GMail) wrote:
> Hello Rodrigo,
> 
>   Have you thought of trying g4u?  It is free
>   http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/g4u/
>   The main site is down for the moement (ISP problems from the looks
>   of it).

After taking a look at both G4U and G4L, I noticed they are pretty much
frontends to DD.

Closing a disk with DD is less than ideal, unless you have 2 identical
disks (including same partnumber), as I have found out after some tries.
You will get several geomery related problems, including a few that will
take days or months to bite you.

Lets give a quick analysis of the other options:

- - cp : You might get filesystem related problems. It will work, but
  you might loose some data. Also, it has no way to copy filesystem
  metadata.

- - tar : Again, it works, but you might end up with the same problems
  you had with cp, loosing some inode data. Again, no way to copy
  filesystem metadata.

- - dump/restore: This tools are based on the filesystem architecture.
  There is no way to dump a whole disk, and you will need a different
  dump implementation for each filesystem type. But if you are dumping
  ext2/ext3 filesystem, or some other fs that has a dump implementation
  for it (jfs comes to mind), this will provide you with the most
  precise copy possible. If, on the other hand, you are using something
  like raiserfs, you are out of luck (raisefs-dump is nothing more than
  a wrapper around tar). Filesystem metadata is copied correctly.

Of course, if you want to do a wholedisk copy (including MBR a
blank space), you will need DD, or that "forensic" mode for ghost.

[]s

- -- 
Rodrigo Barbosa <rodrigob at suespammers.org>
"Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur"
"Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)

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