On 15/08/12 04:05 AM, Merciadri Luca wrote:
You can replace the drive without problems if the external drive contains a direct copy of the failed internal drive. However, that is probably not exactly the case. You need to be more explicit about what kind of backup the external drive contains.-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, I've got a backup of /home on some external HDD. Let us consider that one of my internal HDDs, more precisely the one containing /home, fails. I then need to replace it. If I manage to make the external HDD internal, and change /etc/fstab consequently, would it work without any issues? When should I change /etc/fstab? Would the path to the `new internal HDD' (the one which was precedently external) be the same as the path to the old one (the one that failed)? Thanks.- --
In the simplest case, let's assume that it contains a direct copy of the /home folders (i.e. if /home contains a, b & c, then the external drive would have a, b & c at the root level and not /home/a, /home/b & /home/c). In this case, simply replacing the drive may be sufficient.
However, if you are using UUIDs in /etc/fstab then you will need to replace the failed drive's UUID with the UUID for the internal unit. If you are using device names (e.g. /dev/sdb1) then you may not need to make any changes.
If you are using some other form of backup, then you will need to convert it to a set of folders in the external drive, one for each user account and with the correct user ids, etc..
As for the difference between internal and external, external drives normally are regular drives in a different case (usb or eSATA instead of IDE or SATA). Taking the drive out of the case and putting into an internal drive bay is usually quite simple - it just requires a screwdriver.