replacing failing main drive

[kikkegek]

hi guys,

thanks to Smarttools SMART monitoring I found out on time that my main /dev/sda is failling. unreadable pending sector count went from 16 -> 15 -> 53 recently. So I made an advanced replacement RMA with Western digital and I am currently waiting for the drive they shipped me. If I ship the original drive back within 30 days then I will pay no cost, because of the warrentee. NICE!

so here is my question.


my mATX board has only 2 SATA connections and both are taken by drives:
/dev/sda1 : 1 TB (failing drive)
/dev/sda2: 750 GB drive

I currently just added the second drive to the greyhole storage pool and only my pictures drive is set to have double copies (greyhole option).

I have a pci sata controller I could install to help me, but here is my question.

what would be the best procedure to replace the first failing drive?

[kikkegek]

^bump^

please advise.

My replacement drive came in the mail today. I need to replace it and sent it back in the next two weeks.

otherwise they will charge me for not sending back the old drive.

[bigfoot65]

^ SPLAT ^ Heheheheheh

If the drive is still usable, I would make a back up with Clonezilla Live CD to a secondary drive. Hopefully the new drive is equal or larger in size. Then restore the back up to the new drive. That would give an exact copy of what you already have on the OS drive.

If that is not an option, then you would need to copy all the shares from the old drive to another location. Backup any databases for your apps and then install Fedora 14 from scratch on the new drive. You would have to copy all your files back and install all the web apps again. You could restore the databases to get the apps back to how they were installed previously. Obviously you would have to do all the manual tweaks again as well.

Hope that helps.

[kikkegek]

thanks,
now I need to find out wether I can cnonnect a third drive to my system. I believe my server only has 2 sata connections.

So I probably gonna have to connect it through USB.

keep ya posted

[ghstryder]

thanks,
now I need to find out wether I can cnonnect a third drive to my system. I believe my server only has 2 sata connections.

So I probably gonna have to connect it through USB.

keep ya posted

Why not comment out your data drive in fstab, and unplug it? It isn't strictly necessary, but I don't know of anyone who has lost data by being overly cautious. This will let you plug in your replacement and clone your existing drive. When you are finished, remove the hash, shut it down, remove the old system drive and plug your data drive in.

[kikkegek]

thanks,
now I need to find out wether I can cnonnect a third drive to my system. I believe my server only has 2 sata connections.

So I probably gonna have to connect it through USB.

keep ya posted

Why not comment out your data drive in fstab, and unplug it? It isn't strictly necessary, but I don't know of anyone who has lost data by being overly cautious. This will let you plug in your replacement and clone your existing drive. When you are finished, remove the hash, shut it down, remove the old system drive and plug your data drive in.

that even sounds like a good idea.

I also thought of something else:

1. shutdown my HDA
2. take out data drive of 750GB
3. replace that by new 1TB drive
4. boot it using Clonezilla live version
5. clone the main drive
6. shutdown system
7. put the new drive in "the driver seat" (so connect it to SATA1 connection)
8. put the old 750GB disk back at the SATA2 connection.
9. boot the system

would that work? or need any special attention?

[kikkegek]

okay, tried the above.

tried both with the new drive on external USB connection and on the internal SATA2 (Sata 1.0 connection) connection, but both just gave me only 150MB/min transfers...which will take 3.5 hours for my 33GB partition and I dont even wanna know how long for the rest of the 700GB partition.

1. why are my transfers so slow?

2. the second partition also failed to clone under Clonezilla, because of a bad sector.

3. how can I speed up clonezilla and make it not fail because of bad sectors?

[bigfoot65]

Connection is probably slow due to USB. As for Clonezilla, you will need to check out their web site to see if it's possible to clone with errors. I thought it automatically adjusted, but not looking like it.

You might also try something like Redo Backup and Recovery. Its a Linux cloning software that might work.

http://redobackup.org/

[ghstryder]

I just cloned a 250G drive using dd last week. It took about 90 minutes on an older P4 machine.

Read up on Clonezilla - if you don't find a satisfactory solution, this is what I would do:

Download your choice of a live linux distro that can be installed to a flash drive and boot to the flash drive, then install and run ddrescue. http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

Here is a short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqq9A01geeA
Here is a Fedora specific article: http://infotechmike.blogspot.com/2011/1 ... ue-in.html
Here is a short article: http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue
And another: http://dimitar.me/clone-disk-drives-with-ubuntu/
And the manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ma ... anual.html

[kikkegek]

thanks bigfoot65 and ghstryder. I have found also that ddrescue is probably the best way to go.

I'll try to use this live disc from ubuntu

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/

@Bigfoot:
I got the same speed of only 150MB/min on both the external usb sata controller and connected to the internal sata onboard controller. So probably the internal sata controller is holding the system back.

hopefully this ubuntu this will solve that and have good suport for my setup.