Nick Howitt wrote:

For disk repair, if TestDisk won't do it, I think you have to go professional.

Thank you Nick and Patrick. I might try the clonezilla again. I don't have a Window pc so unfortunately I can't try MiniToolShadowMaker.

I used Testdisk on the drive and the partitions look to be OK. After the "analysis", Testdisk looks to have added the * boot to the right partition. After running Testdisk, I switched out the new drive into the server but it still won't boot.

I suspect there is a missing link to the images or file or grub is buggered. When doing the ClearOS Recovery from the installer there was a part about "chroot" that I think I should have added something on the cmd line but it wasn't clear in the instructions and then I couldn't get the server to boot from the DVD or USB again. I've decided that Dell BIOS is a PITA.

Grub shows the list of kernels but when you select any of them you drop to dracut with a message about initramfs...

(If I knew more, I suspect this would be relatively easy to figure out but I'm a bit of a novice.)

This leaves me with a couple of questions since I can't figure this out.
1) lvm is supposed to be able to do live-migration of data. I've started to read the Redhat documentation but it is a book for just lvm.
I think I should be able to create a snapshot of the boot directory etc that works on the failing drive, and copy/migrate that to the new drive.
Does this make sense or am I looking for lvm to do something it isn't set up to do?

Or

2) I've done the backups of all the data and settings. I've got daily backups from "Configuration Backup and Restore" for years. The /home is on a separate drive. All email are POP so everyone has their email locally. The drive that is starting to have problems contains only the COS system (and mail & websites).

If I do a fresh/new install on the new drive, can I boot to the webconfig and restore all the settings using "Configuration Backup and Restore"? Would this be less futzing around and get up and running again relatively quickly? I expect I'll have to put back a copy of the websites but that shouldn't be an issue. I'm not sure about the mail server but with the settings files and no mail stored on the server that shouldn't be too big a chore?

Or

3) Should I be rebuilding the complete server from scratch and manually set up everything?

Thanks again for your help and suggestions.