So I have two servers that are almost identical. I would like to set up a backupserver in case something happens to my production server. I proceeded to dd the harddrive on my production server into a portable usb drive and now I would like to pass all that data back to my backup web server.

What would be the best way of doing this?

should I just dd from the usb drive to the regular harddrive using a liveCD?


also how would I go about setting up the fstab?

---------------------(my usb drive)------------------
Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 30401 244196001 83 Linux
------------------------------------------------------

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 6 48163+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 7 3167 25390732+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 3168 3330 1309297+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 3331 4866 12337920 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 3331 4784 11679223+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 4785 4833 393561 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 4834 4866 265041 83 Linux


---------------------------------------------------------------------

One more thing, while using dd to pass all my data to the usb drive I encountered a couple transmission problems such as:

[root@internal init.d]# dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/dev/sda1
dd: writing to `/dev/sda1': Input/output error
129+0 records in
128+0 records out

Will this have a negative effect on my backup?


Thanks a lot!!

Hello,

Do the two servers have connectivity to each other?

If so try taking a look at "man rsync" and use rsync to backup the files to the backup server.

Rsync will allow you to automate the process and not worry about CD's and/or usb drives.

-Raymond

I did take a look at rsync but I was trying to clone the server itself that is why I took the dd route.