Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 14:04:58 -0700 (MST) From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> To: James <jamesh@lanl.gov> Cc: Sean Murphy <smurphy@calarts.edu>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Help Failing Disk Problem Message-ID: <20071105135545.V19602@wonkity.com> In-Reply-To: <1194272457.44119.3.camel@secretariat.lanl.gov> References: <472F74A9.9090400@calarts.edu> <1194272457.44119.3.camel@secretariat.lanl.gov>
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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. 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
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