[PLUG] Saving data from a precarious drive

[Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net>]

I have a 200 GB IDE drive that recently stopped being detected by the BIOS.  
After I did a dist-upgrade and was forced to reboot, the drive reappeared.  
The drive had not given me problems prior to disappearing.  I still don't 
trust it and am ordering a replacement.

Once the replacement arrives I want to copy the contents, mostly audio files, 
to the new drive, but don't want to do it in a way that will tax the drive 
and make it fail during the copy.

My first thought was rsync, but I am concerned about the effect this 
(transferring ~180 GB at once) may have on the precarious drive.  

Another thought was to just copy a little at a time, giving it a chance to 
rest in between, but am reminded that sometimes turning things on and off 
causes more wear than being left on.

What are the best practices in this situation?

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