Backing up a nearly dead HDD

[Andrew Haley]

Paul F. Johnson writes:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > It looks like my problem with readahead isn't readahead!
 > 
 > The drive which has my home directories seems to have a problem. If I log in
 > as root (please don't bitslap me yet!), and from the command line look at the
 > home directories, I can see paul, becki, richard and lost+found which is fine
 > as they're supposed to be there.
 > 
 > If I then try to look at the contents of /home/paul, it takes ages and the
 > hard drive makes funny noises, so I'm thinking it's at the end of it's life
 > more or less.
 > 
 > fsck shows some bits and pieces, but essentially, it's not picking up any
 > problems.
 > 
 > Is there a way I can copy everything from one drive to another and keep the
 > permissions from a dodgy drive to a working one? cp -ar seems an option, but
 > it takes a while!

The traditional fast way is "dump -f - | restore -f -" [*] but I'm not
sure dump handles extended attributes correctly.

Andrew.

[*] The drive should NOT be mounted R/W.

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