[clue-tech] N00bish Question regarding drive duplication

[Mike Staver]

Thanks Mike & Red - I'll read up on the different methods described and 
probably pick the fastest one tomorrow :)

mike havlicek wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> --- On Fri, 3/6/09, Red Mop <redmop924 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>> From: Red Mop <redmop924 at comcast.net>
>> Subject: Re: [clue-tech] N00bish Question regarding drive duplication
>> To: "CLUE technical discussion" <clue-tech at cluedenver.org>
>> Date: Friday, March 6, 2009, 8:02 PM
>> On Friday 06 March 2009 01:55:55 am Mike Staver wrote:
>>> I've been in the development realm almost 100%
>> over the last 3 years, so
>>> I'm getting insanely rusty with my linux skills. 
>> Anyhow, I have a
>>> server at home where the age of the non-raid drives in
>> it are concerning
>>> me. I think they are pushing 5 years now, and since
>> this server isn't
>>> critical and I back it up, I'm not too worried
>> about it.  However, I'd
>>> like to throw in a larger drive or two anyhow.  I use
>> typical consumer
>>> Seagate OEM SATA drives in this machine, and I'm
>> going to pick up a 1 TB
>>> drive over the weekend.  My n00b-like question is -
>> what is the easiest
>>> way to simply "ghost" a mirror image of one
>> of my old drives onto a new
>>> one? In the past I've used Norton Ghost to do this
>> in the windows world
>>> with mixed success.  I know in the past with Linux
>> I've just tar'd up a
>>> bunch of files and moved them.  Please tell me there
>> is a more modern
>>> and easy way these days :) Maybe a dd script or
>> something, I'm not sure.
>>> Thanks in advance for any tips you can provide to the
>> rusty guy.
>>> _______________________________________________
>> There are several methods.
>>
>> The LVM pvmove method lets you minimize downtime during the
>> move by moving the 
>> filesystem from one drive to another live.  You can also
>> resize live for some 
>> filesystems (ext3 I know does).  You can even move to a
>> RAID configuration.
>>
>> The tar-copy and rsync methods require you to take the
>> server offline during 
>> the copy.    It has a benefit of defragging the drive.  You
>> can also move to 
>> a RAID configuration.
>>
>> The Clonezilla method works alot like Ghost.  I don't
>> believe you can move to 
>> RAID.
>>
>> The dd method takes a very long time, and does not resize
>> the drive, you will 
>> have to do that in a separate step.  I am fairly certain
>> you cannot move to 
>> RAID with this method.
> 
> Why not setup lvm logical partitions on the new drive for all but the boot, and use software raid 1 to do the copy?
> 
> -Mike
> 
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> 
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-- 

                                 -Mike Staver
                                  staver at fimble.com