What's an easy way to replace a drive?

[Gary Smithe]

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 05:09:24 +0100, Anthony Atkielski
<atkielski.anthony at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> The continuing problems I'm having with my SATA drives seem to center on
> only one of the two drives, /dev/ad10, and since both drives are
> identical (Western Digital WD1200JD 120-GB SATA drives), this is a good
> indicator that the drive itself might be failing.  So I've decided to
> spend $83 and buy a replacement drive to see if that fixes the problem.
> 
> Now, what's the easiest way to replace the drive?  The drive I want to
> replace contains only /var and /tmp.  Are these mounted in single-user
> mode?  I was thinking perhaps I can just replace the drive, set up
> identical slices on the new drive, then restore /var and /tmp from the
> latest backup.  Can I restore from tape in single-user mode?
> 
> I don't have any extra connectors to which I can attach this drive
> without removing one of the other drives, so I'm looking for a way to
> fix it up by just removing the old drive and putting in the new one,
> without the need to have both old and new drives online at the same
> time.
> 
> --
> Anthony
> 


May not be the best answer, but if the drive's data is still intact
(i.e. readable) and the replacement will be identical, maybe try DD or
similar from a bootable "rescue" cd, like freesbie?  If not that, then
you may be able to copy the data between the 2 drives using same said
bootable CD after creating the partitions.

It doesn't meet the requirements of not removing drives unnecessarily,
but it's an option.

My 1 1/2 cents.

GS