[Discuss] How do you backup "/" with rsync?

[Steven Kurylo]

> Yes, you are quite right, if your internal HD fails your BIOS will
> probably hang and you will need to go into BIOS setup to delete the bad
> drive from the list. You can switch the BIOS boot sequence at that time.

I don't know of any modern BIOS which will hang.  It won't be able to
detect the drive and will move on to the next boot device.  Long time
ago I've seen hard drives go wrong and the bios hang as it gets
strange repsonses.

>  From an academic point of view I am not sure where Linux gets its sda,
> sdb, etc information from.  I suspect it may be from the BIOS, "Primary
> Master == sda", "Primary Slave == sdb", etc, in which case even if
> "Primary Master" is dead, skipped or entirely absent, it will still
> identify "Primary Slave" as sdb i.e. it will not rename it sda???

Linux labels its drives in the order it finds them, regardless of what
you've done in the bios.  The first drive it finds will be sda;
usually that will be the PM, if there is only a PS that will become
sda.  But once you have several HD controllers, linux could see
something else first.  It depends on the order you load modules.

But if you use udev, you can make drive letters persistent.  You could
make your WD 200GB drive always show up as sda, regardless of how you
plug it it (sata, esata, usb, firewire, etc).

-- 
Steven Kurylo