Copying A Disk

[Chris Mohler]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:
> Pete Holsberg wrote:
>> On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:08:53 +0300, Marius Gedminas wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 06:52:12PM -0400, Pete Holsberg wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have a disk that is not accessible in Windows and it was suggested
>>>> that I could copy it in its entirety using
>>>>
>>>> "dd noerror if=/dev/hdX  of=~/filename"  where hdX is the drive and
>>>> filename is the name for the copy.
>>>>
>>> I believe that should be "dd conv=noerror", note the 'conv=' bit in
>>> front of 'noerror'.  Also, in modern systems it's often /dev/sdX instead
>>> of /dev/hdX.
>>>
>>>
>>>> How do I know what X is?
>>>>
>>> Use lshal (or the graphical device manager) and search for your disk.
>>> For example, a 120 GB Hitachi disk is shown on my laptop as
>>>
>>>   udi =
>>>   '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/
>>>
>> storage_serial_1ATA_HITACHI_HTS541612J9SA00_SB2D51EVG60DLE'
>>
>>>     block.device = '/dev/sda'  (string)
>>>     ...
>>>     info.product = 'HITACHI HTS54161'  (string) ...
>>>     storage.size = 120034123776  (0x1bf2976000)  (uint64) ...
>>>
>>> The manufacturer, model, serial number and size help you identify the
>>> disk, and block.device shows you how to access it.
>>>
>>
>> Where would a USB drive appear?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>    First read man dd. You can't copy from a partition and to a file.
> This will not work. You say you want to copy a disk. How big is the
> disk? Does it run? How do you connect to it? How many partitions are on
> the disk? Why does Windows not see this disk?
>
>    You need to have another disk to copy to.

Karl: I double-checked the dd man page, and didn't even see anything
that could be mistakenly taken that way.  Perhaps you should read it
yourself?

Pete:  I would connect the usb and take a look at the end of
/var/log/messages and see what happens.  If it mounts successfully,
the log should give you the usb device.  At that point, you should
unmount the drive and then perform the dd operation.  If it doesn't
mount, you may get some clues as to why the disk is acting up.

Also, if the drive contains corrupt data or unreadable sections, you
may have better luck with ddrescue as opposed to dd.

Good luck,
Chris