Re: [gentoo-user] Duplicate identical Hard Disk

[Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com>]

On 04/01/10 17:43, Mark Knecht wrote:
>On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Paul Hartman
><paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Joseph <syscon780@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I have two identical HD in the box and want to duplicate sda to sdb;
>>> sdb is not even partitioned.
>>> I think I could do:
>>> dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb
>>> but I need to boot from CD isn't it?
>>
>> Yes, basically, boot from USB or CD and use ddrescue to clone it, then
>> edit your fstab and I think you should be good.
>>
>> RAID1 would help if a drive physically dies, but if you had any
>> filesystem corruption or anything you'd just have an identically
>> corrupt copy on the second disk.
>
>A big part of my struggles over the last few days has been with mdadm
>& RAID1. I'm learning that we don't want to send someone down that
>path unless he has the right sort of disks. I'm having to deal with
>returns and reordering due to this.
>
>People should be aware of what is really required to do RAID before
>they get started so they don't duplicate my trials. I wasn't and I'm
>paying for it. (Almost literally if I don't get the drives in the
>mail!) ;-)
>
>Cheers,
>Mark

So what you are folks saying is to stay away from RAID-1, beside as Paul mention if I get any corruption and/or configuration (due to ebuild) with RAID I'll 
be screwed anyhow.
So my best option is bootable CD and:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

But I'm kind of confused as to how to edit the "sdb" second drive.
I know I'll have to edit at lest: grub.conf and fstab
But how?

1.) Both disk are bootable, (have a boot sector) if I disconnect first one sda, I think the second one will be recognize automatically as "sda" isn't it?
2.) If configure second drive after copying as "sdb" will it still boot if fist disk is disconnected? 

-- 
Joseph