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.