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Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2014 08:22:05 -0700 (MST)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Olivier Nicole <olivier.nicole@cs.ait.ac.th>
Subject: Re: Server Hang
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Cc: eras mus <erasmu@gmail.com>,
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On Thu, 9 Jan 2014, Olivier Nicole wrote:

>> Is it possible to take such a mirror copy of such a  hard disk so that i
>> can replace it as a hot swap. I request all of your expertise. How to do
>> hot swap?please shed some light on it.
>
> Not only it's possible, but it is really simple, just tar(1) each file
> system one at a time to the new hard disk.

But the disk must be partitioned and formatted first, and bootcode 
installed.  For the partition information, gpart's backup and restore 
commands will help.  This may also be useful, particularly the part on 
MBR: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html

tar will work, but dump and restore will get every attribute.  This 
article talks about dump/restore with examples, and other options:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/backup.html