harddrive failure - please help!! [solved]

[curtis e. bear]

over the night my hard drive bit the dust (running mandrake 10.1). It can run for an hour now, maybe, because it doesn't get too hot, but when it does, i think it quit then. So, is it possable to just copy all files from the old harddrive to a new one without having to reinstall? It took me weeks to get the old one working the way i want it to and i don't really remember how to do it again. What can i do??? PLEASE HELP QUICKLEY!!!!

[arctic]

are your cooling vents working correctly? if one of them stopped working then... sure, your system will get too hot.

 

i am starting a search now. will post any important results as soon as i find them.

 

if you do still have windows and maybe partitionmagic or another partitionmanager like acronis partition expert, then you could copy the whole partition to another drive instantly. most of these apps have a demo or shareware version that might do the job for now.

 

good luck anyways

 

edit: first thing that might help:

Hmmm, well that seems to be the issue here, the low-level apps like dd cannot be used if the partition sizes differ, and the high level tools won't work with your windows partition...or will they? I am not sure if you can use linux cp to move files from one mounted windows partition to another.

 

For your linux partitions I would recommend rsync. Although typically used for network transfer of files, rsync works very well backing up files to a different location on the same computer. If you don't want to learn rsync then just use cp.

 

First mount the '/' partition of your new HDD in some arbitrary place, say /mnt/newdisk then create directories for mountpoint of any additional partitions for linux:

# mkdir /mnt/newdisk
# mount /dev/hdb2 /mnt/newdisk
# mkdir boot usr
# mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/newdisk/boot
# mount /dev/hdb3 /mnt/newdisk/usr

 

Now you are ready to copy over your files using tool of your choice. Remember some things though...you should not copy /proc or /sys directories, this data is generated on the fly. Be sure to respect file ownership and permissions when you copy files or things will break...

 

As for bootloader, this depends if you are replacing your old HDD with this new one, in which case your new one will become /dev/hda. In this case you must reinstall grub. This is as simple as:

# grub
GNU GRUB version 0.94 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> root (hd0,0) (Specify where your /boot partition resides)
grub> setup (hd0) (Install GRUB in the MBR)
grub> quit
#

 

Here are links to rsync docs and a tutorial:

http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/documentation.html

http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Administration/...ion-With-Rsync/ 

Edited April 10, 2005 by arctic

[curtis e. bear]

I got the new hard drive and the old one running as slaves on an xp machine, i tried to use Norton Ghost because it can read ext 2 partitions, and it said it worked, however i cannot boot to the new drive.

[Ixthusdan]

Position the new drive as the old drive was originally positioned. Use the rescue mode on cd1 to reinstall your boot loader. You should be fine. Incidently, you can put the drive in a ziploc bag and freeze it overnight. That'll give you more time on the old drive if needed. (Like an hour if the drive was not working) The trick is to seal the bag so that you don't get any frozen ice on the drive! Hook it up outside of the case. I regularly rescue data with this technique.

 

Oh, and why not come up with a back up scheme??

[curtis e. bear]

i put in cd 1 and reinstalled the bootloader to the new hdd and it worked, thanks to all that gave their input, and now i will make backups.