Have you used smartmon tools ?  These actually give me the best results for determining the number of errors encountered by a drive.

 >
 > Is there a way I can copy everything from one drive to another and keep the
 > permissions from a dodgy drive to a working one? cp -ar seems an option, but
 > it takes a while!

The traditional fast way is "dump -f - | restore -f -" [*] but I'm not
sure dump handles extended attributes correctly.

Andrew.


Why not use dd?  if you are replacing a drive with a similar drive, dd is perfect.


[*] The drive should NOT be mounted R/W.

--
Red Hat UK Ltd, Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TE, UK
Registered in England and Wales No. 3798903