From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 5 21:16:10 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 166B016A41B for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2007 21:16:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jamesh@lanl.gov) Received: from mailwasher.lanl.gov (mailwasher.lanl.gov [204.121.3.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB21F13C4B5 for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2007 21:16:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jamesh@lanl.gov) Received: from mailrelay2.lanl.gov (mailrelay2.lanl.gov [128.165.4.103]) by mailwasher.lanl.gov (8.13.8/8.13.8/(ccn-5)) with ESMTP id lA5LG4YP019254; Mon, 5 Nov 2007 14:16:04 -0700 Received: from oppie-mail.lanl.gov (oppie-mail.lanl.gov [128.165.4.123]) by mailrelay2.lanl.gov (8.13.8/8.13.8/(ccn-5)) with ESMTP id lA5LG3FD029827; Mon, 5 Nov 2007 14:16:03 -0700 Received: from [128.165.86.10] (secretariat.lanl.gov [128.165.86.10]) by oppie-mail.lanl.gov (Postfix) with ESMTP id 941BE1F8002; Mon, 5 Nov 2007 14:16:00 -0700 (MST) From: James To: Warren Block In-Reply-To: <20071105135545.V19602@wonkity.com> References: <472F74A9.9090400@calarts.edu> <1194272457.44119.3.camel@secretariat.lanl.gov> <20071105135545.V19602@wonkity.com> Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratories Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:16:46 +0000 Message-Id: <1194275806.44119.19.camel@secretariat.lanl.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.10.3 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port X-CTN-5-MailScanner-Information: Please see http://network.lanl.gov/email/virus-scan.php X-CTN-5-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-CTN-5-MailScanner-From: jamesh@lanl.gov X-Spam-Status: No Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: Sean Murphy , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Help Failing Disk Problem X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: jamesh@lanl.gov List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:16:10 -0000 On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 14:04 -0700, Warren Block wrote: > On Mon, 5 Nov 2007, James wrote: > > > On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 11:53 -0800, Sean Murphy wrote: > > > >> I have a FreeBSD 6.2 Release box with a single ide that has user data > >> and the FreeBSD OS on a hard disk that is failing. I need advice on the > >> best way to clone the entire disk (or at least the data) onto a larger > >> ide disk drive, then pull the failing disk and replace it with the > >> clone. What is the best way in FreeBSD to do that? > > > > The best way is to do it regularly before the hard drive is failing. > > > > Given that you haven't done that, there're a few methods. I'm a big fan > > of rsync, which is the nectar of the gods, but a lot of folks seem to > > prefer dd for this kind of thing. > > rsync is too high-level, and may not do exactly the right thing with > links or sparse files or who knows what. rsync -cav takes cares of symlinks and all that just right. It's a beautiful thing. Checksumming, too. Ah, bliss. > dd is too low-level--you get > the same partition table/bsdlabel and the exact same slice/partition > sizes. That's okay on an identical hard drive, but a pain on one that's > larger. > dump, on the other hand, is just right. > > -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA dump has the problem that a lot of tools have, though, including rsync. It creates a file list to start from. If the file names on the drive change during the dump, corruption can occur. At least on linux. I remember Torvalds ranting about it on a mailing list. I imagine FreeBSD suffers the same issue, though, as it's a pretty generic problem. dump is a good tool, though, no arguments really here. James