[CentOS] A questiong about replacing my failing drive

[Rodrigo Barbosa]

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On Sat, Jun 11, 2005 at 09:11:47PM -0400, Mark Weaver wrote:
> >I have not checked G4U yet, so I really mean this as a question:
> >
> >How is it easier ? dump | restore is as straightfoward as it gets.
> >I have been using it for 15+ years, and never had a problem (except
> >for raiserfs filesystems, of course).
> >
> >Yes, if I were going to produce a lot of copies of the same disk, then
> >I would look for something like Ghost (or G4U, will check it later
> >tonight). But for this particular task ?
> 
> all right then...I'll bite. All I've ever personally known is Norton 
> Ghost which is why I'm so quick to mention its use. I'm, however, 
> extremely curious and eagar to learn new techniques such as the one 
> you're talking about. Why not lay the process out so's we can get a look 
> at how to work it? I've got a few drives around, especially one that I'd 
> like to clone that has some bad sectors on it that I really need a file 
> from - its a program I wrote a while back that I simply don't want to 
> have to re-write.

Check my other post regarding this. Dump won't clone wholedisks. It
will clone filesystems (with all metadata intact).

Also, there are at least 3 different versions of Norton Ghost, including
one I never saw advertised, and only saw once at a computer manufacturing
plant. Maybe it is just my lack of knowledge, but I found it much more
interesting (not to mention fast and painless).

In any case, unless you are producing multiple copies, there is no real
reason to clone the wholedisk. Actually, I would recomend against it.
Get the new disk, partition it, clone the partitions you want (cloning
the swap partition would be such a waste of time), reinstall the boot
manager (which you would have to do anyway, unless you had the same
bland/model/partnumber on both disks), and you are good to go.

Actully works much faster too.

As a side note, if you are cloning HD->HD and both are IDE, put
them of different interfaces (hda and hdc, never hda and hdb). It
will go much faster. I'm sure 99% of the subscribers know this already,
but it is still worth mentioning for the other 1%.


Now, for making multiple copies of the same disk, the only tool
I recomend is, yes, Norton Ghost. But again, careful with boot managers.
Most expecially lilo. This used to be a problem when I tried it, and
might still be.

I keep pointing about the part number of the HD because more often then
not people think that just because 2 HDs have the same brand and model,
they will be identical. But I have seen some cases where that is not
true, as using DD proved. The part number, on the other hand, was
different for those.

As you said, one must use the correct tool for the correct task.
Of course you are right. My point was just that ghost was not
the best tool for that particular case.

[]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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