Ubuntu

turning off Hard Drive

Asked by Peter

I have 2 hard drives 40Gb and 60Gb both IED 3.5".
The 60Gb is so noisy I have had to disconnect it. I have since thought about reconnecting it and putting a switch in the red line of the power supply for that drive with the switch outside the computer.

Is that likely to damage the computer or upset Ubuntu?

If it is okay how do I take an image copy of the 40GB to the 60Gb disk for a complete backup including all partitions and boot sectors?

Thanks
Peter

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François Tissandier (baloo) said : 		#1

Was this hard drive as loud with another OS (like with Windows maybe)? Some HD are loud, but most of them are not that much... So maybe there is an hardware problem.

Then to add a switch to electrically turn it off does not sound like a good idea to me. Especially if the harddrive is writing something when you turn it off, you may damage it.

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Peter (nitep) said : 		#2

Hi Francois,
It was loud when I bought the computer second hand. After 20 mins it drives me mad. I put it in a borrowed neighbours external HD cover with a USB plug to try and it worked. It can then be turned off when not wanted. I only want to use it for backup and would not turn it off while being written to. I thought the switch idea would be a simpler and cheaper idea than buying an external HD cover (or enclosure). It is still loud when I am using windows in the other partition which I only use for a quality printout as Lexmark don't provide drivers for Linux.
Regards,
Peter

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François Tissandier (baloo) said : 		#3

Ok Peter, you seem to know what you are doing with the harddrive, so I guess it's fine to use a switch if you want.
If you want to make a full copy of the 40Go drive, there are plenty of solutions in Linux. It can go from a simple script you create with a command line (like using Rsync) to some more complex softwares. But I'm not sure for the MBR though. I only backup selected partitions on my system, never the MBR.

To make a complete image of an hard drive, you can use the "dd" command. I think it will include the MBR. It requires that your partitions are unmounted though. It's a very powerful command, but it's better to find a documentation to know how to use it.

I heard about Clonezilla too, it's said to be very good, but it's not included in Ubuntu repositories. Maybe you can check this one.

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Ralph Janke (txwikinger) said : 		#4

IDE is not hot-swappable. So if you want to be able to switch the HD on and off while you have the computer running, You might rather want to get an external USB case for HDs and connect it via usb since that is hot-swappable.

Hope this helps.

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Peter (nitep) said : 		#5

Thanks Francois and Ralph,
From what you are saying it seems as though my idea will work if I only turn the noisy disk on or off when the computer is also turned off. If I am planning a backup I can turn on my switch before bootup and later when finished with the computer turn my switch off. Only needed once per fortnight or so.
Thanks for your advice.
Regards,
Peter