I recognize the obvious need to back up the contents and follow a certain duty of care before attempting to clone my failing pata 250g HD to a 1 tera byte sata. What problems if any could come up when cloning from a failing pata to a sata HD? I’d like to make the switch to sata for many reasons if possible. It is indicated that the HP d530 sff here supports both types.
Cloning will not damage the target sata drive. I would be wary of cloning a failing drive to the sata drive because of the damaged/absent info in the damaged sectors. Or at least be aware that some data might be bad.
If you use dd, it will exit when it comes across a damaged sector unless you set switches to prevent the exit. Have a read here: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Dd_rescue
You can also use gparted to copy partitions from pata to sata. Cute software.
Well off we go then. Never owned a SATA drive. Always replaced or upgraded PATA like for like.
Thanks for the advice.