SMART detected imminent failure of the hard disk...

[Jim Smith]

Michele Zarri wrote:
> ... or in other words: "You are screwed"
>  
> Hello,
>  
> The hard disk of my dual boot (WinXP-Ubuntu) is about to die... I have
> managed to backup my /home (which luckily was on its own partition),
> but I still have three problems (plus many more I will discover
> eventually):
>  
> 1. Thunderbird
> I have created a profile that I was sharing with the WinXP OS. Due to
> the sizes of the partitions the profile was is actually on the
> partition with Windows not in my /home. I would really, really like to
> be able to re-use on the new hard disk, and my question is:
> is it sufficient to save the profile on a DVD or should I export it or
> something else?
>  
> 2. Program profiles
> I have set custom options in almost every program I use (e.g. pidgin,
> konqueror, OpenOffice.org, gimp, ...) so I have now on a DVD all these
> hidden directories that these programs have created.
> I would like to re-apply my settings on the new hard disk, so my
> question is:
> is it sufficient to re-install the programs and then overwrite the
> hidden directory they create with the ones I have saved on a DVD?
>  
> 3. Gnome settings
> Desktop appearance, beryl settings, MIME type associations and so on...
> are they all in my /home or should I try to recover from the dying
> hard disk other directories?
>  
> Of course if you could think of something else I should do that I have
> overlooked (wouldn't be a bit surprised) please send the suggestions
> this way!
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Michele
Some have good luck with getting one of those little cases that adapt an
IDE internal drive (or SATA are available as well) to use an external
USB port. You could then partition and format your new drive as you see
fit, then copy everything you want from your /home partition also all
you want from your WinXP from old drive to new.

YMMV

Jim