A couple of things that might work. I have maintained the g4l disk imaging project since 2004, and it's main options use dd to either clone a disk/partition or make an image file, but it would also have issues with bad sectors. But I have sometimes found that booting to it rather than the running OS, does allow it to sometimes make images with no issues, but that is rare. A second option. The g4l also includes fsarchiver program, which I added at the request of a user. It is not a program that I've written, and only used it a few times to confirm that it did work. It is a file based imager, so it creates images of the files on the partitions. If the errors are in non-used space it might be able to make images of each partition and restore to another disk. A third option is dd_rescue, which is also on the g4l disk that doesn't stop when it finds bad sectors, but will continue on, and then try again to copy them. It has also been a while, but I have also used spinrite in the past on disk to repair disk, and it many times could recovere some data. But don't know if it supports the latest disks, and it does work on the original disks and makes changes. On 21 Nov 2016 at 15:16, Robert Moskowitz wrote: Subject: Backing up the OS - Re: Rebuilding a failing drive To: Community support for Fedora users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> From: Robert Moskowitz <rgm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date sent: Mon, 21 Nov 2016 15:16:15 -0500 Send reply to: Community support for Fedora users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > > On 11/21/2016 01:42 PM, George N. White III wrote: > On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Robert Moskowitz > <rgm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On 11/21/2016 09:20 AM, Matthew Miller wrote: > On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 08:21:01AM -0500, Robert Moskowitz > wrote: > I have a 1TB drive that is getting I/O errors enough that while > I > What is a good way to move the OS and all the data? I used > Clonezilla some many years ago, but that does not seem to > be the way > to go when there are bad sections on the source drive? > Not helpful _now_, but consider making sure you have backups > once you > start using the new system. Then, next time this happens, forget > worrying about transferring from a failing drive and just restore > your > backup. > > The data is backed up. In fact it was one of the rsync cron tasks that > wedged the system while I was gone. The I/O did not seem to be in > the data, but perhaps some temp or other storage needed. > > Backups should periodically read the entire disk, so may encounter bad > sectors in areas that are not often read in normal operation. Backups that > take > too long to run are often the first indication of a failing disk. > > > The challenge is the OS and software configs. Actually the system is a > ClearOS file server and there are all those config information scattered > around by ClearOS. I back up the whole /var/flexshare, but there is a > lot more to their setup and no 'clear' directions from them. Building a > new server from scratch would be painful. Last year (when I had time > while building up my contract work) I looked into building my own > Samba 4 server, but dropped it. Anyway, I have yet to find directions > on a good way to maintain a running backup of the OS for a straight > rebuild. > > After many experiences with having to reinstall the OS in order to install the > backup client needed to restore user data, I make it a practice to keep a > base OS with current updates handy. > > How does on 'backup the entire disk' and/or build a 'base OS with current updates'? Can you > point me to some guidance? > > thanks > > Without that I end up reinstalling the OS and then doing multiple updates. > If you do a few updates a week and > hit a problem then it usually isn't hard to figure out which package caused > the issue, but on a system that has been in service for a few years with > 100's updates, getting form a fresh install from the original media back to an > up-to-date running system may not be easy. With systems that don't have > restrictive licenses, you can just dd the base system to a fresh disk, change > the system name and add the user(s), then install the backup client, restore > the user data, and reinstall end-user applications. > > ddrescue often recovers nearly all the files, so even if the resulting image > isn't fully working you may be able to recover most of the configuration data. > > > If this is a desktop system with room for it, consider buying *two* > drives and mirroring them. That's not a backup (since errors and > mistakes get propagated instantly, and because it's in the same > physical location), but makes situations like this rare (at least, if > you replace as soon as you start seeing errors instead of waiting > for a > double failure). > > > I could never figure out what mirroring failing sectors meant. > > Not sure of the context, but the first sign of a failing disk is often a massive > decrease in > performance which I'm told is due to multiple re-reads of a sector. When a > sector shows > signs of failing, disk firmware copies the data to a spare sector. If the new > disk doesn't > arrive quickly you then see disk failure with a code that translates to "no > spare sectors left > on device". > > > George N. White III <aa056@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia > > > _______________________________________________ > users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > > +----------------------------------------------------------+ Michael D. Setzer II - Computer Science Instructor Guam Community College Computer Center mailto:mikes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx mailto:msetzerii@xxxxxxxxx Guam - Where America's Day Begins G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/ +----------------------------------------------------------+ http://setiathome.berkeley.edu (Original) Number of Seti Units Returned: 19,471 Processing time: 32 years, 290 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes (Total Hours: 287,489) BOINC@HOME CREDITS ABC 16613838.513356 | EINSTEIN 120103112.288695 ROSETTA 52630912.921798 | SETI 95928248.603101 _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
