[CentOS] dying hd on live legacy system...

Fri Apr 25 17:46:21 UTC 2008
Dan Halbert <halbert at everyzing.com>

>>>  What is the most practical method to replace the hard drive?
>> Install another drive (same size or larger), boot from CD in rescue
>> mode and use the dd utility to copy the old drive image to the new
>> disk (example: dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb). However, the failing
>> hardware could make this problematic. Then remove the dying disk and
>> install the new disk on the cable where the old disk was so that the
>> new disk is now /dev/hda.
>>
> 
> Tried this, I should have been more clear above. When I access certain
> sectors the machine reboots.

Just to confirm: you mean the machine reboots even when this disk is not 
a system disk? Suppose you mount it readonly (maybe it's doing atime 
updates unsuccessfully?)?

If it's a peculiarity of the controller, you could try putting it in as 
a data disk in another machine with a different kind of disk controller. 
You could even put it in a Windows box and use one the various free 
utilities to look at the Linux filesystem - perhaps that would not 
exercise whatever issue is causing the reboots.

If you've gotten the vital data off and any customizations out of /etc, 
the crontabs, etc., then if possible, maybe you could just do an
"rpm -q -a" to get the current package list, and then diff that against 
the list you get on a fresh install to figure out what you need to add.

Dan