I've got a setup with three hard drives in my system that are about 7 years old, all running Fedora: one SSD for /boot and two 1TB HDDs that I want to replace. I successfully cloned the SSD a while back but now I'm struggling to clone the two older HDDs because the cloning process just stalls. I've tried using an offline dual bay cloning station that has worked for me in the past, but it's not making any progress. One drive gets halfway, while the other barely gets started before they both just stop after a long wait. I suspect there are too many errors on these old drives causing the failure.
I'm considering two options: first, can I back up my /home directory to a 2TB HDD, swap out my old drives for new ones, and then use GParted to format the new drives before restoring my backed-up files? Alternatively, can I unmount the old HDDs while running the machine and perform a filesystem check and repair? I've checked both drives with smartctl and while they pass, there are some error signs. My ultimate goal is to replace the HDDs while keeping /home intact without having to reinstall Fedora.
1 Answer
Sounds like your cloning method might be struggling with the old drives! A clean format on the new disks before the cloning process could help. Alternatively, consider using 'rsync' after backing up your /home directory. It’s a reliable way to transfer files without worrying about cloning failures.
If you're still having issues, you might also want to look into Clonezilla. It has several options for different scenarios and could work better with the drives you're using.