[lug] Cloning / Replacing Hard disks

[Gordon Golding]

I'm helping out with a couple of situations with what looks like failing drives.  I'm familiar with FC; one of these machines is Debian, the other is Ubuntu.

 

 1)  One is Debian, I was sent this message about it:



“The hard drive on our linux box is indicating that it will fail soon, and that we should backup and restore it. The test it is failing is S.M.A.R.T., the exact failure is "status bad backup and restore." The failure may be weeks or  months away, and it hasn't actually failed yet. S.M.A.R.T. apparently is just informing us that we should really think about replacing the drive.”

I imagine there are some "false positives" with smart, but I take it that the drive should be replaced soon.
Anything to check?

2)  Rebuilding the system from scratch is a lot of work.  Whats the easiest way to clone the hard drive?

3)  Second is Ubuntu 9.04 - " that was making some bad noises recently. "
What's the easiest way/tool for getting a good idea if the drive in on the way out?

4)  If I decide to clone the Ubuntu drive, I notice that the Ubuntu instructions for the Ubuntu install CD's live distro mode mentions using gddrescue.  AND the gddrescue instructions don't include the cfdisk -z /dev/sdb step.
So I suppose I should make life easier and use gddrescue.

5)  I see that Debian has gddrescue, but I don't see instructions for using it - Ubuntu has lots of people posting detailed instructions.

Any guidance, opinions are appreciated.
 

Gordon Golding

 
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