I 'life' my hard disks, replacing them routinely at 3 years.
Being a lazy person this is what I do:
1. Download and burn to a CD the g4u iso from http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
2. Run the CD. At the prompt type 'disks'. Check to see what the disk is called (wd0)
3. Fit a second hard disk to the system.
4. Run the CD again, type 'copydisk wd0 wd1' (as appropriate). Total time for 80Gb copy 4754 seconds, about 80 minutes.
5. Switcharoo the disks.
6. Enjoy new life of disk.
Being a lazy person this is what I do:
1. Download and burn to a CD the g4u iso from http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
2. Run the CD. At the prompt type 'disks'. Check to see what the disk is called (wd0)
3. Fit a second hard disk to the system.
4. Run the CD again, type 'copydisk wd0 wd1' (as appropriate). Total time for 80Gb copy 4754 seconds, about 80 minutes.
5. Switcharoo the disks.
6. Enjoy new life of disk.