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Need advice for best way to replace a faulty disk



Hello,

I have a faulty SCSI (sda) hard disk that is about to crash (has not
happened yet, touch wood(y)). The disk is more and more difficult to
get started. It is currently running now (Debian testing) and I don't
dare to shut it down. In fact it is this box that I'm writing this
mail on. I have an IDE disk that will replace it, but want to backup
as much as possible before doing so.

What I would like to do is to restore the same situation on the new
disk as on the old one. Problem is that the other SCSI disk does not
have space enough to hold the /, /var and /home partions. Also the box
has no room for three disks simultaneously (hda,sda,sdc).  Especially
important settings to restore are network, ssh, samba, printer, mail,
apt-stuff, sound and so on defined in the /etc configuration files,
the users configurations and the home partition.

The box is connected to other computers having more disk space so
whole directories can be moved this way. Also the zip drive (100MB)
can be used.  

I have access to the woody mini pre-release and the woody-3.0r1 CD's to
start from scratch with the new disk. What do you recommend?

One way could be to do as follows:
1. Save partitions (/,/var,/home) on another box. Best way?
2. Install, a mimimum set (woody) using the CD
3. Upgrade to testing
4. Overwrite the new partitions with the restored data
5. apt-get update, all is working as before?

Does this really work?
Other solutions, proposals?

Thanks,
Svante

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options>                  <dump> <pass>
/dev/sda1       /              ext3,ext2   defaults              0      1
/dev/sda2       /home          ext3,ext2   defaults              0      1
/dev/sda3       /var           ext3,ext2   defaults              0      1
/dev/sda4       none           swap   sw                         0      0
/dev/sdc4       /usr           ext3,ext2   defaults              0      1
/dev/sdc1       /usr/src       ext3,ext2   defaults              0      1
/dev/sdc2       /usr/local     ext3,ext2   defaults,noauto       0      1
/dev/sdc3       /mnt/sdc3      ext3,ext2   defaults,noauto       0      1
/dev/cdrom      /cdrom         iso9660     user,noauto,ro        0      0
/dev/fd0        /floppy        vfat        user,noauto           0      0  
#/dev/sdb4       /zip           vfat        defaults              0      1
#/dev/sdb4       /zip           ext2        user,noauto           0      1
proc            /proc          proc   defaults                   0      0



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