Replace SCSI Drive

[Grant Peel]

Hi all,

I currently have a SCSI drive that *may* be going bad on one of my production servers. I have lots of backups :-)

Scenario:

The drive that is showing the occasion error, is a 76 GB Seagate SCSI 10K spin drive. It is at the network center about 120 miles away. This drive is not using anywhere near 76 GB, and the server will never need 76 GB. I estimate its using about 20 GB now.

I am at home, and have a barely used 36 GB Seagate 10K SCSI drive here, currently hooked up to my home (Windows XP BOX) via an Initio SCSI adaptor.

What I would like to do is:

Using my windows box, FDISK and set up the disk slices at home, using some kind of FreeBSD boot disk. I will of course, make sure there is enough room on each file system to accomodate the data from the other (going bad) disk.

Take the pristine disk to the Network Center,

Shut down all software on the machine that has the bad disk, and make full dumps of all filesystems on that machine (/, /var, /home, /usr) and move the over to the new formatted drive.

Since I have never done this before, I have some questions:

!. Can I use a FreeBSD bootable installation disk (6.4) made from an ISO image, to boot my PC and make the filesystems on the 36GB drive, without actually installing FreeBSD? (Please feel free to tell me exactly how :-)).

2. Once I get that drive to the network center, and restore the dumps to it, how do I ensure the drive is bootable? (I assume I actually do that in the previous step). 

3. Is it possible to skip step one altogether and use the instructions in the  man pages regarding "Restoring a filesystem" and makeing the 'Pristine' filesystem? If so, again, how do I ensure the disk is bootable?

Thanks a billion in advance,

-Grant.

P.S. I AM reading all the manuals and handbooks, I just can't afford to mess this up :-)