Failing system drive: mirror or clone to new drive via cp and rsync and grub configuration

[Mitchell Laks <mlaks@verizon.net>]

Hi,

i am running Debian Sarge on a server.

I just had a server with a failing system drive /dev/hda. In particular errors 
write errors from the /var partiton = /dev/hda7. 

I decided to clone the system drive to /dev/hdb and I wanted to document, for 
others benefit, what I did.

my drive /dev/hda had the following partitions:

/boot     /dev/hda1
/    /dev/hda2
/home   /dev/hda3
swap   /dev/hda5
/tmp   /dev/hda6
/var    /dev/hda7


1) I put a new blank drive in the system, at /dev/hdb.

2) I ran cfdisk to create a mirror of the partitions on a on the new drive.

3) I then ran mkfs.ext3 on the different partitions /dev/hdb1 -/dev/hdb7 
except  /dev/hdb5.

4) I ran mkswap /dev/hdb5.

5) For each of the partitons /dev/hdb's

        a)  I mounted it partition on /mnt

        b) I then ran cp -a (same as -dpR)  for each one 
   cp -a /boot /mnt &

 except for the / partition: 

         c) for the / partition (/dev/hda2 and /dev/hdb2)

i instead ran 

rsync -a  --exclude=/proc/* --exclude=/boot/* --exclude=/home/* 
--exclude=/mnt/*   --exclude=/tmp/*  --exclude=/var/* / /mnt &

The reason I did differently for the / partition was to avoid copying the 
other partitions. This is not neccesary if you are doing a mirror via a 
knoppix on the cd cause then the root partition is not mounted,

6) then I ran 

 grub
and at the grub shell i ran:

grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd1)
grub> exit

7) I then shutdown the system and  removed the /dev/hda device and moved 
the /dev/hdb to the /dev/hda position 
(Ie moved the slave drive to the master position on the primary ide 
controller). 
8) The system then rebooted and continued to run without a stop.

Thanks for all the help I found in this and other forums.

MItchell laks