dd problem

[charlie derr]

Karl F. Larsen wrote:
> Georg von Zengen wrote:
>> so you have to delete it, chose another name or creating a new file in
>> "nita". dd can only write into files e.g.
>> sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/media/disk/nita/sdb1 bs=2048 conv=notrunc
>>
>> Georg
>>
>> Karl F. Larsen wrote:
>>> Georg von Zengen wrote:
>>>> hi Karl,
>>>>
>>>> may their is a directory called "nita" on your portable hard drive
>>>>
>>>> Georg
>>>>
>>>> Karl F. Larsen wrote:
>>>>> 	I am on 9.04 and trying to dd from a hard drive to a portable 
>>>>> hard drive. This I think should work but it errors out 
>>>>> complaining that /media/disk/nita is a directory.
>>>>>
>>>>> sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/media/disk/nita bs=2048 conv=notrunc
>>>>>
>>>>> This used to work fine. Why not now?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 73 Karl
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> 	Yes the directory nita does exist.
>>>
>>> 73 Karl
>>>
>>>
> 	I never tried that script. I will need to do so. But bet you 
> a can of cheap beer it doesn't work. To get the job done I had 
> to use:
> 
> 	sudo dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/sdg1
> 
> and that worked fine. But it fouled up my portable hard drive. 
> I hope I can delete the dam windows files and save my backup 
> of this computer!!!
> 
> 73 Karl
> 
> 

I don't drink beer but my wife does, so if it's good beer I'll take that bet.

The advice Georg provided was sound.  Instead of trying to replace a directory with a file (what you were originally 
trying to do), you'd have been better served to try to write to a file inside the directory as Georg suggested (because 
that wouldn't have erased all the other data you might have had on that portable hard drive like you just did).  Or 
maybe you didn't have any other data on that portable hard drive (or maybe you didn't care about what was on it?).

By doing it the way you did, you wrote an identical copy of sdb1 onto your portable.  Which may be fine but you won't be 
able to easily add more data to the portable drive either.

     good luck,
          ~c