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Thanks to everyone who offered help on this thread.<BR>
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I used tar as suggested by Carl and backed up all my partitions. However, while backing up '/', tar complained about files under 'proc' (may be I don't need to back them up at all) and I had to use '--ignore-failed-read' to make that work. I am hoping that did not cause any harm. The compressed files are about half the size and I could back them up on DVDs.<BR>
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The harddrive on my desktop seemed to have stabilized after 'fsck'ing the partitions but I guess I cannot take any chances. I will use the scripts that I have generated to do future backups often till I install a replacement drive.<BR>
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