Best way to replace a drive with a clone

[Steven Stern]

On 07/31/2010 01:21 PM, Brian Millett wrote:
> On Sat, 2010-07-31 at 12:59 -0500, Steven Stern wrote:
>> According to the SMART stats, the single drive in my Fedora server is
>> starting to fail.  Rather than backup, do a clean install, and rebuild,
>> I'd like to try to clone the existing drive to a new one, then swap in
>> the new one.
>>
>> What are the restrictions on doing this and the best way to accomplish
>> it?  I have the Clonezilla Live CD that I use for backup.  Will that do
>> it?
>>
>> Or will a straight dd do it?
>>       add new drive as PATA slave /dev/sdb
>>       dd -if /dev/sda -of /dev/sdb
>>       remove /dev/sda
>>       change the jumpers on /dev/sdb to match what was /dev/sda
>>       reboot
>>
>> In the dd procedure, I'm not sure what to do if sdb is larger than sda.
>>
>> --
>> -- Steve
>
> Clonezilla will do a disk to disk clone which is very slick.  Which will
> fit into your 'dd' scenario.  If you can do that, then that is the best.
> Otherwise clonezilla can clone to an image which you know.  Also see the
> fsarchiver application available on systemrescuecd.  I've used both with
> great success.  My personal preference is fsarchiver for partitions and
> clonezilla for full disk.
>
The thing that makes this difficult, at least to me, is that LVM is 
involved.

-- 
-- Steve