HP-UX

Well it's being used for vg00 which normally would be your primary boot volume group. If 8/12.5 is also in vg00, I would guess that you have a mirrored root disk.

Do a "bdf /" The first field of the last line output will be something like /dev/vgXX/lvol3. What is XX? Then, as root, do:
lvdisplay /dev/vgXX/lvol3
(or whatever, it may not be lvol3)

Look for the line that says "Mirror copies". Zero means not mirrored. A positive integer means mirrored.

lvdisplay /dev/vg00/lvol3
--- Logical volumes ---
LV Name /dev/vg00/lvol3
VG Name /dev/vg00
LV Permission read/write
LV Status available/syncd
Mirror copies 1
Consistency Recovery MWC
Schedule parallel
LV Size (Mbytes) 200
Current LE 50
Allocated PE 100
Stripes 0
Stripe Size (Kbytes) 0
Bad block off
Allocation strict/contiguous
IO Timeout (Seconds) default

looks like this is a mirror, I guess the terms are confusing me, I would think mirror is synced disk with the root disk, where on other os's(sun) its not mirrored, it just contains the necessary files to boot the machine into some state, maybe im totally wrong...(im a unix admin newbie as well, but your really helping me learn, thanks man) Anyways, would you say this disk is the alt_boot and it is setup? I do realize this might not work....

The trouble is that "mirror" is clearly defined but "alt_boot" is not. In addition to using a mirror, there is another way to go. That other way might be called "alt_boot". Or both methods together could be called "alt_boot". But anyway...

A mirror is always in sync. If on side breaks, the other takes over. It is great protection against a hardware failure. Also it's a massive performance boost while both sides are operating. But if you do:
cd /etc
rm -rf *
you screw up both sides of the mirror at once.

The other technique to copy the boot disk to a second disk. The copy may even be removed from the system. Or it can be left in the system. When the boot disk breaks, you boot from the copy. It will be a little out of date. But it gets you going much faster than starting from scratch.

Both techniques have strengths and weaknesses.

im %100 positive the second option you gave is what my boss had in mind.... what is that called in HP terms?

I don't think there is an official term.

But there is one more option to look at: IgniteUX. You can copy your boot disk to tape and then boot the tape to rebuild your disk. This requires a tape drive. I understand that Ignite can work over a network, but I've never done that.

See this thread for more info about ignite. There are more Ignite threads too, search for Ignite* to find them all.