It seems my hd is dying, I'm regularilty getting errors like

Mar 1 11:17:43 www kernel: hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Mar 1 11:17:43 www kernel: hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=12902251, sector=10631202
Mar 1 11:17:43 www kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 03:04 (hda), sector 10631202

with my Raq3 with Raq4 OS.

this started a couple of days ago. Before however, my server already was going crazy (kernel panic?), it was rebooting itself regularitry, mysql was crashing, or it was comppletely locking up exept for pings, I also found some oops kernel erros in the logs. I was asuuming bad memory, and replaced it. But that didn't help at all, still same problem. Than the hd errors came up, directories and files where disappearing. So I figured out that the prior errors could also have been caused by the swap memory on the hd, and I disabled swap. Since than I didn't have any more crashes.

My questions:
Would you agree that the cause of the problem is a damaged hd? (It could have been damaged during a transport to a new data centre, but I also replaced the mobo before to solve a problem with the NIC, don't know if the mobo change is connected at all to the problem) How likely do you think is still a software problem?

Also, could anybody give me instructions on how to mirror the hd with the Raq? is this possible at all just to connect a second hd and mirror the data of the damaged one to it, and to connect is as master hd later than?

If you want to, take out the faulty HDD and then load a new HDD in and restore the OS.
After that shutdown and connect the faulty HDD to the second IDE port. Powering up will give you an option to mount it as (hdc) and then you can see and transfer datya from there.

y how can you duplicate a drive? I have a 8gb in mine and wish to upgrade it to a 40gb so how can i ghost it?

I have personally never done this but I heard that you can use RSYNC to do that.
OR just copy and paste them over from the old Disk to the new one.

oh right, so i could install the 40gb in my spare 550 and just ftp the whole drive over?

that is one option, or you can just plug it into your unit and then "mount" it in and do a drag and drop.
Remembered that ther is a software to do importing, maybe you can try googling for it.

cool - nice advice, thanks for that :)