[Techtalk] dying hard drive

[Cynthia Kiser]

Quoting Maria McKinley <maria at shadlen.org>:
> Asking for more advice... I have a disk that is definitely on its way 
> out. When I boot, it has numerous unrecoverable errors (in the /usr 
> partition), but it does boot up and run. What is the best/easiest way 
> for me to transfer stuff to a new drive? In the past, I've had drives 
> fail more drastically, so that I have to re-install, and then I pull off 
> config and user stuff off of backup. This time my old disk is still 
> bootable, so seems like I should be able to just move stuff over to the 
> new disk before it fails completely. Would love advice on best way to 
> precede...

So what is your goal? Given the unrecoverable errors on /usr, I would
be reluctant to assume any of the installed applications were
intact. So I would be inclined to get a new hard drive, install the OS
and programs you have currently on the new drive, then mount the old
disk and rsync the /home stuff and any config files you know you
changed. 

But perhaps I am being pessimistic. Would taking a disk image* onto new
hardware, then use rpm --verify to see if the packages are intact,
work instead? 

* I don't actually know how to transfer a bootable disk image on Linux
but my Mac sysadmin does it frequently for  his/our Macs.

-- 
Cynthia N. Kiser
cnk at ugcs.caltech.edu