From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 23 16:43:16 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3332B16A419 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:43:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from Patrick.Baldwin@studsvik.com) Received: from bostonserver.studsvik-analytic.com (firewall.studsvik-analytic.com [155.212.59.75]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E5C8313C474 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:43:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from Patrick.Baldwin@studsvik.com) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (pc162.studsvik-analytic.com [192.168.169.162]) by bostonserver.studsvik-analytic.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id l7NGLsYb029724 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:21:54 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <46CDB649.8060102@studsvik.com> Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:31:05 -0400 From: Patrick Baldwin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-MailScanner: Found to be clean Subject: FreeBSD USB disks - booting and backups X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Patrick.Baldwin@studsvik.com List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:43:16 -0000 I'm thinking of backing up my FreeBSD 6.2 webmail server by installing FreeBSD onto the USB, and then dumping the whole filesystem onto the USB. That way, in the event of a drive failure, I can boot off the USB drive, and then just restore everything onto the webmail server. Has anyone else done this? I haven't found any mention via Google, which has me concerned that there might be a good reason no one's done this that I haven't thought of. One issue I ran into thus far has been the 500 GB Western Digital MyBook USB drive I tried first makes my system crash when I plug it in. I can get another USB drive and repurpose the one I've got right now, but before I put any more resources into this idea, I thought I'd bounce it off some experts. Any suggestions, links, etc. welcomed. Particularly for large capacity USB drives that won't crash my system. Regards, -- Patrick Baldwin Systems Administrator Studsvik Scandpower, Inc. 1087 Beacon St. Newton, MA 02459 1-617-965-7455