Firstly, system setup -

HP900 K460, 3 internal hard drives that make up the system volume group(vg00) no software mirroring

HP-ux version 11.00

2 Nike 20 raid arrays attached, fully populated with 40 4gb hot swap drives(All used in production environment)

I have 3 disks that make up my root volume group(VG00). 1 of them is making a very load noise so I think its going to fail sometime soon. (Not sure which one)

I also have a number of other volume groups/disks running on 2 nike 20 disk arrays

The questions I have are -

I would like to know if its possible to clone or copy the failing disk onto another drive whilst it is still running then boot from the cloned disk.(I have no spare drive so will need to add one?

I have a make_tape_recovery backup, if I have to restore from that tape(Not sure how I do that) will I also need to restore all the other volume groups even though they are on separate disks or will they continue to function once the system has been restored from the tape.

I vaguely remember doing a recovery about 8 years ago using the make_tape_recovery which worked fine and the other disks carried on working

I'm a bit of a Unix novice so step by step instructions would be great

Just to be doubly sure, can you confirm the make_tape_Recovery options I should use to ensure I can restore my system disks should the noisy disk fail.

Hi there, sorry for long post, I've just checked the drives in SAM and 1 of them is a 4gb Swap disk(Lvol9) if that is the failing disk, is it possible to remove the swap disk, replace with new disk and add swap to that disk(If this makes sense). I'm assuming in this instance I can just delete the swap
would this be right?