The problem: Harddrives seem to die on Friday at 4 PM.
Needed: A simple system to have anyone be able to easily copy a harddrive, even with bad sectors.
In the past I manually copied the data with a giant rsync command. after creating all the partitions. I had tried DD, but with bad sectors there could be issues. DD_Rescue wasn’t bad, but I was going for something even simpler.
The solution: FreeBSD recoverdisk (it comes with the default FreeBSD 8.0 install)
Recoverdisk can do any OS, skip bad sectors, restart the copy, and even shows a percentage to completion.
I also wanted something that could have the drives swapped out of easily, even if the server was live. To do this, I used ESATA and an external drive dock, with a motherboard that supports AHCI. I also used FreeBSD 8.0. I will not go into the process of installing that however.
So to build this you will need:
1) an esata PCI card for two ports
2) ahci motherboard
3) a server running freebsd 8.0
4) external sata drive dock. I am using StarTech dual 2.5/3.5 Drive eSATA/USB 2.0 SATA HD Docking Station (Part# SATASOCK22UE)
Some things to know before you begin. You could use this as USB, but I found that is much slower. Also smartcheck will not work under USB mode. To do any hot swapping you need an AHCI motherboard. In the below setup I have disk names as ad6 and ad8 – these may be different on your set up – so be sure to double check and change them as you see fit. Finally, test test test, and label because you could wipe the wrong drive otherwise. On my set up, I have the section for the old drive clearly labeled (and called ad6) and the section for the new drive labeled (called ad8). I have also found, some drives that have a lot of bad sectors get to 99.9XXX done and never complete the copy – you can end it there and the new drive will boot.
Here is the process to set this up. Everything below assumes you will put the bad drive in /dev/ad6 and the good drive in /dev/ad8. Change this as needed.
1) Install FreeBSD 8
2) Use pkg_add to install
bash
e2fsprogs
gettext
libiconv
linuxfdisk
nano
ntfsprogs
psmisc
smartmontools
Thats simply issuing a pkg_add -r bash for example.
3) Set bash as the default shell with chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash root
4) Edit /root/.bash_profile and add
if [ -e /etc/bashrc ]; then
source /etc/bashrc
fi
5) edit /etc/bashrc and add
CLICOLOR=”YES”; export CLICOLOR
LSCOLORS=”ExGxFxdxCxDxDxhbadExEx”; export LSCOLORS
COLOR1=”\[\033[1;35m\]” ### Bright Purple
COLOR2=”\[\033[0;34m\]” ### Dark Blue
COLOR3=”\[\033[0;35m\]” ### Purple (Magenta)
COLOR4=”\[\033[0m\]“ ### Blank
COLOR5=”\[\033[1;37m\]” ### Bright White
COLOR6=”\[\033[1;31m\]” ### Red
COLOR7=”\[\033[1;33m\]” ### Bright Yellow
COLOR8=”\[\033[1;32m\]” ### Light Green
COLOR9=”\[\033[0;36m\]” ### Cyan (Aqua)
COLOR10=”\[\033[1;34m\]” ### Blue
TTY=”$(tty | sed s#”/dev/”#”"#g)”
export PS1=”$COLOR2/–$COLOR10($COLOR2\u$COLOR10@$COLOR2\h$COLOR4$COLOR10)$COLOR7:$COLOR5[$COLOR4\w$COLOR5]$COLOR2-$COLOR5[$COLOR4$TTY$COLOR5]$COLOR2-$COLOR10($COLOR4\$(date +%I:%M%P)$COLOR10)\n$COLOR2\-$COLOR10>$COLOR4 ”
# START bash completion — do not remove this line
bash=${BASH_VERSION%.*}; bmajor=${bash%.*}; bminor=${bash#*.}
if [ "$PS1" ] && [ $bmajor -eq 2 ] && [ $bminor '>' 04 ] \
&& [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then # interactive shell
# Source completion code
. /etc/bash_completion
fi
# freebsd
if [ -f /usr/local/etc/bash_completion ]; then
. /usr/local/etc/bash_completion
fi
unset bash bmajor bminor
# END bash completion — do not remove this line
export VISUAL=nano
# commands
alias list=”atacontrol list”
alias detach1=”atacontrol detach ata3″
alias detach2=”atacontrol detach ata4″
alias attach1=”atacontrol detach ata3 && atacontrol attach ata3″
alias attach2=”atacontrol detach ata4 && atacontrol attach ata4″
alias smart1=”smartctl -s on /dev/ad6 2&>/dev/null ; smartctl -data -a /dev/ad6 2>&1| more”
alias smart2=”smartctl -s on /dev/ad8 2&>/dev/null ; smartctl -data -a /dev/ad8 2>&1 | more”
alias copy=”recoverdisk -w /root/disk.txt /dev/ad6 /dev/ad8″
alias restartcopy=”recoverdisk -r /root/disk.txt -w /root/disk.txt /dev/ad6 /dev/ad8″
alias part1=”fdisk-linux -l /dev/ad6″
alias part2=”fdisk-linux -l /dev/ad8″
alias badblocks1=”/usr/local/sbin/badblocks -vv /dev/ad6″
alias badblocks2=”/usr/local/sbin/badblocks -vv /dev/ad8″
alias copyhelp=”cat /etc/motd | more”
# END BASHRC
7) Edit /etc/motd and add
Quick commands:
HD Recovery:
copy – copy bad drive (1) to good drive (2)
restartcopy – restart a copy that has failed (reboot / powerfailure etc)\
HD Test:
smart1 – smartcheck bad drive (1)
smart2 – smartcheck good drive (2)
part1 – list partitions and drive size on bad drive (1)
part2 – list partitions and drive size on good drive (2)
badblocks1 – run a bad block test on bad drive (1)
badblocks2 – run a bad block test on good drive (2)
Start / Stop
attach1 – start drive 1 (bad)
attach2 – start drive 2 (good)
detach1 – stop drive 1 (bad)
detach2 – stop drive 2 (good)
Misc
list – list all drives
Linux Tools
e2fsck – fsck for linux
Windows Tools
ntfsfix – fix for dirty windows filesystem
FreeBSD Tools
fsck – fsck for freebsd
Mount
mount -t ext2fs – ext2/3 linux
List This Help
copyhelp
That’s it. Now you are done with the setup. Hopefully that was easy for you.
Ok, so how can you use this? Log into the server when both drives are in the proper location and run
copy
Here are some real work examples:
Copy and restartcopy
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:20P)
\-> copy
Bigsize = 1048576, medsize = 32768, minsize = 512
start size block-len state done remaining % done
3145728 1048576 500104716288 0 3145728 500104716288 0.00063
4194304 1048576 failed (Input/output error)
174063616 1048576 499933798400 0 173015040 499934846976 0.03460^C
Saving worklist … done.
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:20P)
\-> restartcopy
Bigsize = 1048576, medsize = 32768, minsize = 512
Reading worklist … done.
start size block-len state done remaining % done
333447168 1048576 499774414848 0 332398592 499775463424 0.06647^C
attaching a drive:
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:19P)
\-> attach1
Master: ad6 <SAMSUNG HD502HJ/1AJ10001> SATA revision 2.x
Slave: no device present
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:19P)
\-> attach2
Master: ad8 <WDC WD3200AAJS-00L7A0/01.03E01> SATA revision 2.x
Slave: no device present
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:19P)
\-> list
ATA channel 0:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 1:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 2:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 3:
Master: ad6 <SAMSUNG HD502HJ/1AJ10001> SATA revision 2.x
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 4:
Master: ad8 <WDC WD3200AAJS-00L7A0/01.03E01> SATA revision 2.x
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 5:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 6:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
Detach a drive:
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:18P)
\-> detach1
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:19P)
\-> detach2
/–(root@recover):[~]-[pts/0]-(03:19P)
\-> list
ATA channel 0:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 1:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 2:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 3:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 4:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 5:
Master: no device present
Slave: no device present
ATA channel 6:
Master: no device present
Now it is safe to remove it.
Show partitions (it also will show the drive model and size)
\-> part1
Disk /dev/ad6: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/ad6s1 * 1 60800 488375968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
As you can see in the help section there are other options as well. With any command that uses 1 or 2 at the end, 1 is assumed to be the bad drive and 2 is assumed to be the good drive.
Finally here are some pictures of my set up:
