Hard Drives, mirroring and SATA

[Andrew Hammond]

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On 17-Apr-06, at 10:13, William O'Higgins Witteman wrote:

> I think I may have a failing hard drive.  I haven't seen any  
> glitches at
> all - everything works great - but I see this in my logwatch report:
>
>  --------------------- Smartd Begin ------------------------
>
>
>  /dev/hda :
>     Prefailure: Seek_Time_Performance (8) changed to 247, 248, 249
>
>  Warnings:
>         Warning via mail to $ME at locahost: successful  - 1 Time(s)
>         Sending warning via mail to $ME at locahost ...  - 1 Time(s)
>
>  ---------------------- Smartd End -------------------------
>
> So I'm worried.  Should I worry?
>
> The next question is, how do I mirror a hard drive

You probably mean clone, not mirror. Mirroring is done through the  
RAID subsystem. However it's a bit messy to retro-fit a mirror. I  
suspect you don't want to go this route.

> (rather than go
> through the hassle of reinstalling)?  Can I do a dd from one drive to
> another?

If they're identical drives, absolutely. However, you probably don't  
want to try it while they're mounted.

> Do I need to do this with a live CD?  Or is it easier to just
> reinstall?

If you've backed your data up then a re-install makes more sense.  
Gives you an opportunity to throw in an upgrade while you're at it.  
If you have a complicated mess of a system that you don't want to  
spend any more time on than absolutely necessary, then you might want  
to clone the data onto a separate disk. There are plenty of ways to  
do this. Switching to maintenance mode, formatting and mounting the  
new disk then copying data over is probably the easiest. There are  
plenty of ways to accomplish this too.

> Lastly, should I just buy another IDE drive, or should I get an SATA
> drive (the difference seems to be about $4 more SATA)?  Thanks.

SATA offers higher IO as well as smaller and easier to manage cables.  
The SATA disk subsystem in Linux is substantially better than the  
other disk subsystems. Assuming you have a supported SATA controller  
already on your motherboard, then it's a no-brainer.

__________________________________________________
Andrew Hammond    416-673-4138    ahammond-swQf4SbcV9C7WVzo/KQ3Mw at public.gmane.org
DBA, Afilias Canada Corp. Ltd.
CB83 2838 4B67 D40F D086 3568 81FC E7E5 27AF 4A9A


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