Swappable Hard drives?

[Jay O'Brien]

Wojciech Puchar wrote:

> with identical drive make copy with dd
> 
> dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/ad1 bs=64k

Jerry McAllister wrote:
> 
> You should fdisk the second drive and make is bootable and create
> the identical partitions with disklabel ( you can use /stand/sysinstall
> to run fdisk and disklabel for you if you want, though fdisk and
> disklabel are not nearly as difficult as their reputations seem
> to have them - especially now that some more work has been done
> on their man pages)
> 
> Then, use dump(8) piped to restore(8) for each partition to make
> the duplicate copies - don't attempt to duplicate the swap partition.
> And probably don't bother to duplicate /tmp unles, for some reason
> you are keeping something more than immediate temporary stuff there - 
> you shouldn't if you can avoid it.  dump/restore is probably better 
> than dd for such a thing and definitely better than tar for this type 
> of thing.
> Don't forget to fsck the new partitions before (and maybe after)
> writing them.

Wojciech, Jerry: 

Thanks for all the input. Now to read up on dd and dump; my second 
HD will be here Thursday, I want to be ready. 

This FreeBSD is like people. There are many ways to make things work;
there isn't just one "right way". It makes sense to rely on other's 
experience, and then apply it. Based on what I am learning from 
everyone here, I think there's a story to tell. So, I will carefully 
document my actions. Maybe someday I can repay the help and advice 
I'm getting now.

Jay 
Rio Linda, CA USA