[SOLVED] Hard drive going to die any time.

cwebs · 10-19-2011, 06:41 PM

Hard drive is ready to give up soon. Getting harder to boot every time. Duel bood with XP. How can I "copy" Ubuntu 8.04 on to the new hard drive. I beleave Windows can be moved to the new hard drive with an imaging program. I am new to Linux and run EMC2 on my CNC. Thanks, Carl

widget · 10-19-2011, 07:22 PM

You could just copy the whole HDD with copy/paste commands in Gparted from a Live CD.

cwebs · 10-20-2011, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by widget

You could just copy the whole HDD with copy/paste commands in Gparted from a Live CD.

Would I have to do anything with the master boot sector?

SecretCode · 10-20-2011, 10:17 AM

If you want to restore both windows and ubuntu together to a new drive, it would be worth copying the MBR ... but in this case I would suggest Clonezilla rather than Gparted.

But it's probably better to do a fresh install on a new drive - of a newer version than 8.04 - and then restore the data separately, in which case you would not need the MBR.

Do you already have read and/or write errors on the old drive? If you do, I would suggest that you stop using it immediately and get ready to learn about the ddrescue utility. I've had good results with this, but it took a long time.

cwebs · 10-20-2011, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretCode

If you want to restore both windows and ubuntu together to a new drive, it would be worth copying the MBR ... but in this case I would suggest Clonezilla rather than Gparted.

But it's probably better to do a fresh install on a new drive - of a newer version than 8.04 - and then restore the data separately, in which case you would not need the MBR.

Do you already have read and/or write errors on the old drive? If you do, I would suggest that you stop using it immediately and get ready to learn about the ddrescue utility. I've had good results with this, but it took a long time.

I don't have any read of write problems...Yet!
I don't have the windows software for a fresh install. That is most of the problem. I don't mind fresh install of Ubuntu. 8.04 or 10.04 will work for me. I only need EMC2. This machine is only used to run my CNC router in Linux. But I will have to use the Windows for the CAD/CAM part. I don't know anything about programing and am way to old to leard it now BUT I need to use Linux. Thanks Carl

BlackRider · 10-20-2011, 10:47 AM

You can perform a test on the S.M.A.R.T of the drive to find out how close is it to Death. Use "smartmontools", available in the repositories of most distributions. There are lots of documents around explaining how to use it.

Quote:

Do you already have read and/or write errors on the old drive? If you do, I would suggest that you stop using it immediately

I agree with that.

Now, the clash course about backupping:

Connect a backup drive to your computer, and ensure it is no smaller than the dying drive. Assuming that your inner drive is "/dev/sda" and your outer drive is "/dev/sdb", run as root:

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb conv=noerror,sync

You'll have a binary clone of the main drive (but, if there is data corruption already, try dd_rescue as suggested).

SecretCode · 10-20-2011, 12:22 PM

Regarding recovering windows, clonezilla or gparted or dd will get you an exact copy. To avoid reinstalling windows, do clone the entire drive including the MBR.

Are you going to run in the same computer (ie install a new hard drive in it)? Otherwise, you may run into the need to reactivate windows.

cwebs · 10-24-2011, 05:17 PM

Fixed the easy way for me. Used "Todo Backup"free and did a clone of the harddrive. Everything was there when I swaped the new for old HDD. I can't beleave how easy it was, three or four clicks and it was all done for me. Then I installed 10.04 also. Need to get the computor on line and install EMC2. Thanks for any help, Carl