Minor disaster recovery

Jim Kuzdrall gnhlug at intrel.com
Wed Aug 12 08:59:20 EDT 2009


On Wednesday 12 August 2009 08:16, Tyson Sawyer wrote:
> Its been at least 10 years since I have actually done a recovery of
> this sort...
>
> We will attempt to find a replacement drive today.  We live in
> Brookline, NH and work in Bedford, MA.  Any suggestions on stores or
> drive brands?

    I have had good service from Showtime Computers in Hudson NH, 
http://www.showtimepc.com/.  They are tech-savvy and can give you 
advice based on failure reports from customers.
>
> Any suggestions on recovery strategy?  One strategy I had in mind is
> (if the old drive still runs) is to boot the old drive with the new
> as a secondary.  Shut down all extra services.  Partition and format
> the new drive.  Copy the filesystem from the old to the new.  Install
> Grub on the new (dont' know how, never done much with Grub) and boot
> it. Do some sort of restore from BackupPC to restore any libraries
> for files that have been corrupted.

    Folks more expert than I will comment, but I suggest that you 
install a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10 (exact same version as before) on 
the new drive.  All of the Ubuntu files will have creation dates 
earlier than anything you changed.  Take a look to see what that date 
is.  Then copy anything newer on your backup to the replacement disk.
>
> Other suggestions?  ...or fill in the details (specifically the
> install of Grub and moving to the primary position) of what I have
> outlined?

    I would be leery of recovering the operating system from the failing 
disk.  You would not know if a seldom-used file had a flaw in it. 

Jim Kuzdrall


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