Disk Recovery - Part II

[lug at the-leveys.us (Don Levey)]

I wrote:

>
> That's sort of what I figured.  I've got a RAID1 already for my /var
> partition, which houses all the truly irreplaceable content (pictures
> of my kids, music, etc).  I should have a spare spot on the tertiary
> IDE interface (which is housing one drive for the RAID) so I'll set
> it up that way.
>

OK, so I've just ordered 2 160GB drives, which should be in early next week.
Here's the plan, though I am probably missing some steps.  The original disk
is also 160GB, in three partitions: /, /misc, and /home.  The /misc is what
I've used as a temporary area for backups (mondo/mindi images), so I don't
really need to keep the data in that area:


* Install one disk in my external USB housing.
* fdisk and format to partition that disk as the previous one.
* copy data from the old /home (/dev/hda3) partition using dd
* copy data from old / partition - I suppose I should use dd there too, to
copy MBR, or can I just use cp -a?
* install second disk in USb enclosure, fdisk/format
* install both disks in main case (on separate IDE interfaces) and mdadm to
set up RAID
* Boot system from new RAID to test.

Should mdadm synch up the drives so that the data will be mirrored
automatically?
Should I have a single /boot partition on a non-RAID?  I've heard that
booting from RAID can be tricky.

Thanks for the help!
 -Don