Re: frequent disk error, need guidance

It appears that Gary Aitken <freebsd@dreamchaser.org> said:
>of fbsd in such cases), wanted to see if the following is a good way
>to copy the old disk to the new one.
>
>mount /dev/ada1p2 /mnt/newsys
>cd /mnt/newsys
>dump -0 -f - /dev/ada0p2 | restore -r -Dv -f -
>
>However... this is a running system, which seems unlikely to produce
>a consistent result.

I'd shut down to single user, make a /.snap directory, and do dump -L
to tell it to make a snapshot before dumping.  That should work OK.