[COLUG] Hard Drive Failure?

[Matthew Gardlik]

I think I may have had my first hard drive failure.  I only have limited 
experience doing any sort of hard core administrative experience, and 
would like to ask for help on how to remedy the situation.

I have backups, so, even if I could not recover any files off the hard 
drive, that is not an issue.

My system:

I have a server running Fedora that I use for file storage, as a 
webserver, dhcp, and a firewall for my home network.  I have one hard 
drive which gets mounted as / (/dev/hda) where all the system files are, 
and one hard drive mounted as /home/ (/dev/hdb).  I believe hda has gone 
bad.

Here are some of the symptoms:
    Some of the files on hda seem corrputed.  The files on hdb seem fine.

    When trying to run top, and other commands, I get an output like:

       $ top
       -bash: /usr/bin/top: Input/output error

    I get this error when trying to run fsck as well.

So, my question is, what is the best way to go about fixing things?  Can 
I just replace the old hda with a new drive, and re-install the system, 
and then configuring fstab to mount the other hard drive as home?   If 
possible, I would like to make sure the Linux installer doesn't format 
hdb, I'm guessing there will be some way to make this change in the 
installer when I format and partition the new drive.

Has anybody had a similar problem that could help me out?

The second part to my question, and much less important question at the 
moment, are there any good suggestions for distros to use as a server 
distro?  I seem to remember a thread on the mailing list about using 
Fedora for servers, but any recommendations would be welcome.


Thanks,

Matt