For the situation you are in (failing drives), dd or ddrescue or dd_rescue (I prefer dd_rescue myself) is definitely the best method for cloning failing drives-
I usually just boot up into RIPLinux or System Rescue CD (nothing gets mounted)... and away you go..!! with ddrescue, if you have setup networking in your live environment, you can use sshfs and create an error log as well..
Good luck!
----- Original Message ----
From: David C. Rankin <drankinatty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: arch-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2009 2:32:46 AM
Subject: Re: dmraid disk failure - howto rebuild new disk - gparted hates Me :-(
David C. Rankin wrote:
> Listmates,
>
> My Seagate drives are dropping like flies with less than 1400 hours of run
> time. (that's less than 58 days of service!)
<snip>
>
> That's pretty much where I am now. My next thought is to just use dd to copy
> the partitions over. I have opensuse on the sda/sdc array (mapper
> nvidia_fdaacfde), so the drives I am working with are not mounted anywhere and
> should be easy to work with.
>
> What says the brain trust? Can you think of any way I was screwing up gparted
> so it wouldn't even format the copy partitions? What about the dd method? Any
> hints or gotchas? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
>
Ok, I decided on:
dd bs=100M conv=notrunc if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdd
I'll let you know how it comes out ;-)
--
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
