On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 11:44 pm, Jack O'Quin wrote: > Anthony DiSante <orders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > rsync -av --delete --exclude '/mnt/backup/' / /mnt/backup/ > > > > So /mnt/backup/ is then an exact copy of /, and the best part is, it's > > bootable and functions just like the original drive(s) if I stick it > > on the motherboard. And the backup process usually takes just about a > > half an hour, depending on how much new data I've added, of course. > > Are you sure it's really bootable? Maybe you should try it. > > I doubt that the MBR, /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf are correct for a > single-disk configuration. These should be easy to fix as part of the > recovery process, but you're going to need to boot a rescue disk first > and reconfigure for the new hard disk. I've always used a pair of removable caddies and have it set up so I can reboot, put in a fresh unformatted drive, and go all the way thru a complete partition and rsync of the main drive onto the backup, and then reboot directly onto the backup drive... without any intermediate reboots. Using an external firewire drive I would imagine would also work with even less rebooting. I put this file in /etc which gets rsync'd to the backup drive and I use the following bash function (in .bashrc) to fire it off... # cat /etc/lilo.hdc (which ends up in /mnt/hdc5/etc/lilo.hdc) boot = /dev/hdc disk = /dev/hdc bios = 0x80 delay = 1 install=menu image = /boot/vmlinuz root = /dev/hda5 label = linux read-only altlilo () { local BU_MNT=/mnt/hdc5 mount --bind /dev $BU_MNT/dev # for devfs mount --bind /proc $BU_MNT/proc chroot $BU_MNT /sbin/lilo -L -C /etc/lilo.hdc umount $BU_MNT/dev umount $BU_MNT/proc return 0 } This is not exactly audio related but it has to do with using HDDs for backing up the system as well as the data. --markc