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

[John Blomfield]

Steven Kurylo wrote:
>> 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.
>
>   
That's the case I have in mind! If the HD is missing the BIOS does skip 
to the next drive but I've had a drive fail so that the BIOS knows its 
there but can't read any data and hangs.
John
>>  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).
>
>