crashing hard drive

crashing hard drive

[Raul A. Gallegos]

Hi gang. Currently I'm running FC3 on a machine which has 2 hard drives. 
Both are 40gb. the first hd is the root /usr/local and /var partitions 
while the second one is all 40gb of /home.

It appears that the hard drive is about to crash because I'm starting to 
get unreadable hda errors some give a sector it cannot read others say 
unknown errors. In any case the system is not acting right and the hdd 
is kind of old.

So now to my question. If I get another 40gb hdd which I do have one of. 
Can I simply transfer the stuff from the one to the other either by 
using tar saving all permissions? Or should I reinstall the os on the 
new hdd and just redo all my settings.

Right now the mail system I use is vpostmaster which is a combo of 
postgres for the mail, spam, user accounts, passwords, etc and it puts 
all it's maildir mail in /var/spool/vpostmaster. If I reinstall the 
whole os I can easily save that directory not losing mail but I'd have 
to recreate the accounts after reinstalling vpostmaster.

I'm fine in doing this because if I needed to I could use another os or 
a new Fedora. But in case I do stick with FC3 will simply transferring 
all the hard drive stuff work?

Thanks.

-- 
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
Raul A. Gallegos ... IliwSsmc

Re: crashing hard drive

[Joseph C. Lininger]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello,
To answer your question, most likely you can just use tar to backup the
system and then use it again on the new drive. Don't do this while the
system is running though or weird things will happen. There are two
cases when you won't be able to simply use tar:

1. If you are using extended attributes/acl's on the filesystem, or
2. If you are using some sort of program that uses inode numbers for
accessing stuff. (mail system would be the culprit here if anything)

In either case, you wanna use something like dump or xfsdump or similar
tools that will preserve that stuff. But most likely you can just tar
with the understanding that you may have to fix up your mail queue
afterwords. No matter how you do it, make sure to use a cd to do it. Do
not tar up or dump a running system.

- --
It's not one damn thing after another, it's the same damn thing over and
over. (History repeats itself)
Joseph C. Lininger
Oh alright, here's the *actual* signature...

And so it came to pass that on Sat, 10 Jun 2006, Raul A. Gallegos said

> Hi gang. Currently I'm running FC3 on a machine which has 2 hard
drives.
> Both are 40gb. the first hd is the root /usr/local and /var partitions
> while the second one is all 40gb of /home.
>
> It appears that the hard drive is about to crash because I'm starting
to
> get unreadable hda errors some give a sector it cannot read others say
> unknown errors. In any case the system is not acting right and the hdd
> is kind of old.
>
> So now to my question. If I get another 40gb hdd which I do have one
of.
> Can I simply transfer the stuff from the one to the other either by
> using tar saving all permissions? Or should I reinstall the os on the
> new hdd and just redo all my settings.
>
> Right now the mail system I use is vpostmaster which is a combo of
> postgres for the mail, spam, user accounts, passwords, etc and it puts
> all it's maildir mail in /var/spool/vpostmaster. If I reinstall the
> whole os I can easily save that directory not losing mail but I'd have
> to recreate the accounts after reinstalling vpostmaster.
>
> I'm fine in doing this because if I needed to I could use another os
or
> a new Fedora. But in case I do stick with FC3 will simply transferring
> all the hard drive stuff work?
>
> Thanks.
>
>


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Re: crashing hard drive

[Marcel Oats]

I guess the other answer, is to use a drive imaging programme to burn 
the drive image to a cd, or simply get into the situation where you 
are able to clone the old drive to a new one.  However, you did 
mention that there are some bad sectors.

Marcel
At 03:20 PM 11/06/2006, you wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Hello,
>To answer your question, most likely you can just use tar to backup the
>system and then use it again on the new drive. Don't do this while the
>system is running though or weird things will happen. There are two
>cases when you won't be able to simply use tar:
>
>1. If you are using extended attributes/acl's on the filesystem, or
>2. If you are using some sort of program that uses inode numbers for
>accessing stuff. (mail system would be the culprit here if anything)
>
>In either case, you wanna use something like dump or xfsdump or similar
>tools that will preserve that stuff. But most likely you can just tar
>with the understanding that you may have to fix up your mail queue
>afterwords. No matter how you do it, make sure to use a cd to do it. Do
>not tar up or dump a running system.
>
>- --
>It's not one damn thing after another, it's the same damn thing over and
>over. (History repeats itself)
>Joseph C. Lininger
>Oh alright, here's the *actual* signature...
>
>And so it came to pass that on Sat, 10 Jun 2006, Raul A. Gallegos said
>
> > Hi gang. Currently I'm running FC3 on a machine which has 2 hard
>drives.
> > Both are 40gb. the first hd is the root /usr/local and /var partitions
> > while the second one is all 40gb of /home.
> >
> > It appears that the hard drive is about to crash because I'm starting
>to
> > get unreadable hda errors some give a sector it cannot read others say
> > unknown errors. In any case the system is not acting right and the hdd
> > is kind of old.
> >
> > So now to my question. If I get another 40gb hdd which I do have one
>of.
> > Can I simply transfer the stuff from the one to the other either by
> > using tar saving all permissions? Or should I reinstall the os on the
> > new hdd and just redo all my settings.
> >
> > Right now the mail system I use is vpostmaster which is a combo of
> > postgres for the mail, spam, user accounts, passwords, etc and it puts
> > all it's maildir mail in /var/spool/vpostmaster. If I reinstall the
> > whole os I can easily save that directory not losing mail but I'd have
> > to recreate the accounts after reinstalling vpostmaster.
> >
> > I'm fine in doing this because if I needed to I could use another os
>or
> > a new Fedora. But in case I do stick with FC3 will simply transferring
> > all the hard drive stuff work?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
>
>
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>
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>FQLmSeOQ13VPPWaZMPHDq6c=
>=Sjs1
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
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