Minor disaster recovery

[Jeffry Smith]

Step one - duplicate the drive.   Do a "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" (or
suitable drive with a new disk).  You could also do "dd if=/dev/sda
of=/var/disk-copy" to create a file with the name.

One key I've found in recovering bad disks is to minimize the read/writes.
Do a copy and work with that.

jeff

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:29 PM, Jim Kuzdrall <gnhlug at intrel.com> wrote:

> 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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