cloning hard drive as backup strategy - ensure bootable

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I've found a number of similar scenarios on this site and serverfault but still unclear about one thing.

Basically I want to rsync from one 2TB drive to another 2TB drive and run this nightly.

In case of a hard drive failure, how can I ensure my backup hard drive can be swapped in and booted from?

EDIT: This will require me contacting the data center to physically swap the drive for me, which is why I'd like to have copied mbr records before hand, or whatever is needed to ensure the drive boots. This is the part I'm unsure of.

This is a cloud server, but not a VM. Running Debian 8 minimal image. My overall backup strategy will involve more real-time database backups etc, but I'd like to know if something crazy happens to the main drive, I can get back up and running quickly.

Andrew Grothe

Posted 2016-04-21T16:54:12.543

Reputation: 101

Some sort of virtual environment that can test boot/shutdown the drive after each backup, surely there is someone here that can figure it out. – Moab – 2016-04-21T16:59:56.793

@Moab not really worried about testing each time I do a backup. Sorry if that's how the question came across. More interested in "what specific command/tool do I use even once to ensure the drive is bootable". – Andrew Grothe – 2016-04-21T17:04:58.023

Another thought is to back up using a disk image instead of actually cloning to a drive, if something happens it would not take long to move the image to the drive. There are some real reliable disk imaging software's out there, I have used Acronis for years to store disk images and have never had one fail to boot after applying the Acronis image to a drive. Image for Windows is another good one. – Moab – 2016-04-21T17:06:56.250

Even if it is "bootable" does not insure it will boot into windows properly or without problems you have to repair to get it booting. – Moab – 2016-04-21T17:08:01.327

Just FYI, I did mention this is linux :) I checked Acronis but the price is fairly steep when there should be free tools to do this with. – Andrew Grothe – 2016-04-21T17:16:54.040

See this http://www.tecmint.com/linux-disk-cloning-tools/

– Moab – 2016-04-21T17:26:06.147

Answers

1

Instead of using rsync, why not use software raid and mirror the two drives? That mechanism will ensure that in the event of a drive failure that your system remains functional. If your server has a hot swap chassis then having the drive replaced won't require any downtime on the machine. Linux software raid employs backgrounded array reconstruction using idle system resources to copy the data back to the newly added disk. There is an article here on how to do this on a running system

neofug

Posted 2016-04-21T16:54:12.543

Reputation: 165

Now we are talking. Thanks for this! Some study material for tonight. – Andrew Grothe – 2016-04-21T18:52:58.133

Asked: 2016-04-21T16:54:12.543

Viewed: 59 times

Active: 2016-04-21T18:19:29.357