[ale] hd duplication --quick response requested--

[John M. Mills]

You say, "I need the computer up at all times."  Unless you are willing to
risk destroying the new disk, or have one of those "hot install" disk
holders ("hot shoes") like those by Kingston (I don't know if they do IDE
models, or only SCSI.), you will need to drop power to install the
replacement, and you probably should reboot once you've completed the
changeover even if you come up with a mechanism which might avoid it. 

As to populating the new disk, I would do the following:
1) Make a master file list, and use it to tar selectively everything
   which needs to end up on the new disk, onto your backup medium --
   consult 'man tar' how to copy links without copying their target files,
   and how to preserve ownership and permissions.  I use 'find' on the
   appropriate branches, then trim by hand to get the filename file for
   your 'tar'.  For starters, you will probably kill the top-level entries
   of the form "./<blah_blah>/" (directories) and keep those of the form:
   "./<blah_blah>/<yip_yip>" (actual files).

2) Install the new disk on a computer you _can_ shut down (or one equipped
   with disk "hot shoes" - you probably want to install a couple of those
   on your "unstoppable" platform, no?), partition it as appropriate,
   mount on some suitable mount point, and 'untar' the backup onto the new
   specimen.  For ext2 partitions, I think this is transparent, but Win95
   installation may require Win95 tools to copy entire.  When you're done,
   I expect the new disk to have everything but its boot sector ready.

3) Now, stop your "unstoppable" - sorry, you should have thought of that
   when you hard-bolted the original disk - install the new disk in its
   correct address (in a "hot shoe", plus a second one for future swaps?)
   boot from boot floppy (and make one quickly if you don't already have
   one!), rerun LILO, and reboot 'for real.'  If you have doubts about the
   copy operation, move the original disk to an unused address and mount
   its partitions selectively as you work through any kinks in your clone.

If you don't have convenient backup facilities, you can do all this on the
target platform at the cost of one more shutdown/reboot cycle: just put
the new disk at the unused address, build it there from the installed
disk, then swap them.  I think it may even be possible to run LILO on the
new disk before you shutdown, move it to its final home address, and
reboot, but I don't think I ever got that right the 1st time. 

Good luck.

  John M. Mills, Senior Research Engineer -- john.mills at gtri.gatech.edu
  Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0834
        Phone contacts: 404.894.0151 (voice), 404.894.6285 (FAX)
         "The cardinal virtues of a programmer are Laziness,
            Impatience, and Hubris." -- attr. Larry Wall 

On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, David Hamm wrote:

> I have an hd that is dying I suspect.  The problem is that I need the
> computer up at all times.  I have backups but I'd like to duplicate the hd
> to another hd that is simular but not exactley the same.  Whats the
> easiest and fastest way to do this?
> 
> 
>