[PLUG] Replacing hard drive

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Thu Sep 2 13:51:01 UTC 2004


  Apparently the power supply failure on my venerable, old system torqued
the second drive (with /usr and /usr1; /usr/local is on /dev/hda) such that
the 'needs_recovery' flag is reset even when cleared manually. As this is my
oldest hard drive (a WD 8.4G drive) I don't mind replacing it. I picked up a
WD 120G/7200 rpm/8M cache drive at Best Buy ($120 with $60 in rebates).
Because this coming weekend is Labor Day weekend I'll be laboring away as
usual and this would be a good time to replace the drive. I hope!

  Below is the protocol I believe will allow me to move all of /usr and
/usr1 from /dev/hdb to the new drive, then have the new one recognized as
/dev/hdb. Call it a reality check or a sanity check, but I want to feel
comfortable that I'm doing the proper things in the correct order before I
find myself completely down on a holiday weekend.

  Suggestions, corrections or whatever are welcomed.

Thanks,

Rich

-- 
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>
==========================================================================
1.  Disconnect cdrom drive (/dev/hdc).
2.  Connect new (120G) hard drive on that cable.
3.  Power on system; BIOS should detect new drive as /dev/hdc.
4.  Run 'cfdisk' and create two partitions: /dev/hdc1 as /usr and /dev/hdc2 as
/usr1.
5.  Run 'mkfs -cvt ext3' on each partition.
6.  Take a _long_ break.
7.  Mount each partition on /dev/hda1; e.g., /mnt/usr and /mnt/usr1
8.  Use cp/tar/rsync to copy all of /usr to /mnt/usr and all of /usr1 to
/mnt/usr1.
9.  When finished, power down system. Replace existing /dev/hdb with new drive;
replace cable on cdrom drive.
10. Power on system and expect that the new copies of /usr and /usr1 will be
seen properly and mounted correctly within the filesystem.




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