[NTLUG:Discuss] HDD recovery

[Eric Schnoebelen]

Fred writes:
- I friend has a Vista system with an error message about imminent
- hdd failure, probably from S.M.A.R.T. He is obviously upset because
- of no backups (ever) and about a gig of total usage (os + data).
- 
- I can bring his hdd here and dd his old 320G drive to a new 500G
- but having never actually having cloned a drive to a larger one,
- I have a few questions:

- 1) dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY is the basic cmd but how do I decide
-     what bs to use? What about other options?

You want to use a multiple of the largest sector size of the
between the two devices.  These days, 4k is a good, safe
starting point.  Of course, you can specify a small block size
for the failing disk, and a larger block size for the target
disk to minimize any possible loss to to failed sectors.

- 2) Will this clone the disk including the MBR? My guess is yes...

Yes.

- 3) What to do after the dd cmd? How to make the remaining 180G (or
-     so) available?  If parted will do it, how?

I know NetBSD's fdisk will do it automatically, so I can't
imagine that reading the MBR into parted, and then writing it
back out wouldn't do the same.


You might want to look at g4u (aka ghost for unix) as a tool to
handle all of the ugly stuff for you..  It works on local disk,
or over the network.  (http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/)

--
Eric Schnoebelen		eric at cirr.com		http://www.cirr.com
  There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make 
  it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other is 
  to make it so complicated there are no obvious deficiencies - CAR Hoare