How to Properly Prepare for Move to FC2

[Mike Bartman]

At 11:52 AM 5/14/04 -0700, Tom 'Needs A Hat' Mitchell wrote:
>On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 09:44:38AM -0400, Clint Harshaw wrote:

>Safe requires a backup.
>
>Backup your data in ways that you know, understand and can test!

I've installed two removable HD trays in my tower machines.  One is for the
system disk, the other is for scratch space, swap space or whatever temp
uses I might have.  I have a spare system disk in a tray too.  To do a
backup I shut down, swap the data disk for the spare system disk, and use
System Commander's partition copy capability to copy all the partitions
from the active system disk to the backup disk (anything that runs only in
memory and can copy partitions across disks will do).  This gets all files
backed up without worrying about access conflicts or changes happening
while I'm backing up, and it gives me a "hot spare" in case the system disk
goes toes up (it's happened once so far).

When I need to do a major upgrade, I do a backup as above, then I upgrade
the *copy* I just made.  If the copy was faulty, or the upgrade fails, I
can do another...the live disk hasn't been touched.  If I just run out of
time I can abort the upgrade and put the live disk back in and do the
upgrade at another time (while realizing I don't have a backup at the
moment ;-).  If the upgrade works, I run it for a bit to make sure I'm
happy with it, then I make it the live disk, and do a new backup to the old
live disk, and run off of it, leaving the proven disk as the backup again.

If you are really paranoid, using two backup disks isn't a lot more
expensive...an A and a B disk, so even if things go totally screwy, you've
still got a (slightly older) full backup to recover from on the other
backup disk.

It's been working for me for a few years now anyway, with Linux and WinNT
both.  Trays are about $30/pair at the local computer store, and install
like a HD, so if you can plug in plugs and fasten screws, you are all set.
They even have key locks so that they can be made a bit less removable if
you need that.

-- Mike Bartman

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose that freedom,
and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more,
it will lose those too."  

                                                -- Somerset Maugham