Anyone knows how to clone a HDD without any partitions? [DONE!]

[Hugoneus]

I have a hard drive from a 86142B, which is an optical spectrum analyzer. The instrument has a HDD with the firmware in it. The HDD does not have any partitions nor does it show up as anything meaningful under windows.

I tried Clonezilla (which is Unix-based) to duplicate it. But the software doesn't like the fact that the HDD has no partitions. It is as if they just wrote data to the sectors of the drive and used it like "memory" without any file structure.

Has anyone dealt with anything like this?

[fzabkar]

If the HDD is healthy, you can use the Tools -> Copy Sectors function of DMDE to clone the drive sector-by-sector. You can either clone it to another physical HDD, or you can create an image file.

https://dmde.com/

DMDE is both a disc editor and a data recovery tool. It can recognise many file systems, and it can extract known file types from the image, if any exist.

If the HDD has bad sectors or bad heads, you can use HDDSuperClone (now open source). This tool understands how to work with failing HDDs.

http://hddsuperclone.com/

In both cases the cloning process is OS-agnostic, ie the HDD is treated as a bunch of bits.

[Monkeh]

Fire up any Linux-based system and just use dd to copy the raw block device across. You can probably just use Clonezilla and switch to a terminal to do it.

[Hugoneus]

I am going to try the suggestions now!

[antenna]

Try Macrium Reflect

[SoundTech-LG]

This has worked for anything I have thrown at it...

https://www.hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

[apelly]

Has anyone dealt with anything like this?

This is a classic "hard-to-google" problem because there are a million charlatans trying to take advantage of the no-backup-numpties who are desperate to get back their almost complete first novel, thesis, or kids baby photos.

I wouldn't recommend buying anything. There is certainly a linux tool that will work.

As suggested: dd, is the obvious choice. One thing I would say about dd though; depending on the size of the HDD you're copying it can be worth while experimenting with the block size option. Doesn't effect the end result, but may reduce the time required by a bunch.

[Hugoneus]

Thank you everyone! You guys are awesome. I managed to do it with DMDE and direct sector copy.

I also realized how horrible Google has become. None of the tools you suggested came up in my many searches. Except for Macrium Reflect which doesn't do sector-by-sector copy.

A dirty tactic that many sites use is to write a "fake" forum post about their own product and answer they own questions. They make the whole thing look like legitimate and of course Google indexes it and this makes 90% of search results useless.

[Uunoctium]

tl;dr

You can try X-Ways Replica, an DOS based cloning tool. Came as give-away with a Winhex licence 20 yrs ago. One can choose "entire disk" and it works with un-partitioned hard disks since V0.94 (see history).
Only an DOS formatted start-disk is needed where replica.exe is present (48kB). Depending on disk size and host system a copy takes up to 2hrs, cause Replica copies exact bit-by-bit including unused and free space.
http://www.winhex.com/replica.html
(no longer distributed since'05, PM for further information)

[andy3055]

Taking note of this thread. Great ideas.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Thank you everyone! You guys are awesome. I managed to do it with DMDE and direct sector copy.

I also realized how horrible Google has become. None of the tools you suggested came up in my many searches. Except for Macrium Reflect which doesn't do sector-by-sector copy.

A dirty tactic that many sites use is to write a "fake" forum post about their own product and answer they own questions. They make the whole thing look like legitimate and of course Google indexes it and this makes 90% of search results useless.

The problem with recommending all over the internet tools like dd is that they can be a double-edged sword.

[Berni]

Yeah better be very VERY careful when using linux dd. It can wreck all of the data if the wrong parameters are put in.

My own solution is "EaseUS Todo Backup Free" it has a horrible name, but it can clone drives 1:1. Most of the reason i use it is that it can also resize partitions afterwards, so it comes pretty useful in moving the OS from a HDD to a SSD.

Another useful tip is that WinHex has the ability to open disk drives in raw form, letting you explore the contents of a drive as raw sectors and copy things around by hand. It can be used to do things like manually fix a damaged partition table or do forensic analysis on data left behind by the filesystem.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I'd be interested to know just what the FS structure looks like, and why on earth the designers wouldn't use something off the shelf.

I've heard of some exotic PVR's where they corrupt the partition table so the ordinary windows user can't copy the sacred files on it.

[Berni]

I'd be interested to know just what the FS structure looks like, and why on earth the designers wouldn't use something off the shelf.

I've heard of some exotic PVR's where they corrupt the partition table so the ordinary windows user can't copy the sacred files on it.

It could be that they just used a filesystem so obscure that none of the normal disk tools out there can recognize it.

There is a similar case of weird formats. Like in the HP 4145 boots from floppy but it uses a weird format that can't be read by a PC. Not even with special software, it needs a special floppy controller to do it. So as a result if you loose/corrupt the boot disk you have very little chance of finding a piece of hardware that can write a fresh boot floppy. Some of the HP dynamic signal analyzers also use weird formats, but some of them will at least read regular DOS formatted disks.

[Nominal Animal]

I wouldn't recommend buying anything. There is certainly a linux tool that will work.

As suggested: dd, is the obvious choice. One thing I would say about dd though; depending on the size of the HDD you're copying it can be worth while experimenting with the block size option. Doesn't effect the end result, but may reduce the time required by a bunch.

I recommend starting with
    dd if=source-device of=target-device bs=2M iflag=fullblock conv=fdatasync
which reads and writes in two-megabyte (2,097,152-byte) chunks, and ensures the data hits the target device before it returns (so if the target device is slow, like USB Flash or similar, there will be a delay after it is seemingly done before it returns, because it waits for the operating system to tell it has all been written to the target device before returning).

To check what device you should use, most Linux distributions include the util-linux package, which provides a nice command for this:
    lsblk -at
The un-indented devices are the block devices (TYPE=disk), and the indented devices are the filesystems and partitions on them (TYPE=part or TYPE=crypt if encrypted) that are currently mounted.

If you want to check if /dev/foo is the one you think it is, then
    cat /sys/block/foo/device/transport
will tell you which bus it is connected with (PCIe, USB);
    cat /sys/block/foo/device/model
will tell you its model,
    cat /sys/block/foo/device/vendor
will tell you its vendor/manufacturer (if known), and
    cat /sys/block/foo/device/serial
will tell you its serial (if known).

If you are lazy like me, then you write a Bash script or alias that does
    for dev in /sys/block/*/device ; do d="${dev%/*}" ; printf '%s:\n Model: %s\n Vendor: %s\n Serial: %s\n Transport: %s\n\n' "/dev/${d##*/}" "$(cat "$dev/model")" "$(cat "$dev/vendor")" "$(cat "$dev/serial")" "$(cat "$dev/transport")" ; done 2>/dev/null
which makes it quick and easy to identify which is which.

[JohanH]

A vote for dd here as well. I've tried all kinds of crap backup tools for windows and none are good for professional use. The foolproof way is using dd. Now I always use a Linux machine for creating master copy hard disks/files (for production use in a factory).

Be sure to have enough disk space, otherwise you will get all sorts of issues.

A good way to ensure that the copy matches the disk is to verify checksum of source disk and target file.

After running the dd if=... of=... command, creating a file on the disk, look for the output where it said how many bytes it wrote, then use this number to calculate the checksum of the disk (change /dev/sdX to your actual disk):
sudo head -c <number of bytes> /dev/sdX | md5sum

Then compare to the file:
md5sum -b <your file>

The numbers should match. Now store the checksum in a text file so you can verify it at any time.

[apelly]

dd [...] can be a double-edged sword.

True. Most *nix command line tools will not ask if you are sure you want to shoot your grandma.

Personally, I'd rather trust myself to read my own script, than rely on some random internet windows software. YMMV.

You only

#dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda

a few times before you learn to read what you type before you press go.

Also... For anyone following... Don't copy pasta that... It's not a useful command.

[Ed.Kloonk]

dd [...] can be a double-edged sword.

True. Most *nix command line tools will not ask if you are sure you want to shoot your grandma.

Personally, I'd rather trust myself to read my own script, than rely on some random internet windows software. YMMV.

You only

#dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda

a few times before you learn to read what you type before you press go.

Also... For anyone following... Don't copy pasta that... It's not a useful command.

I'm with you. The point I failed to make was that the OP received the right responses due to the way the question was asked.

[Zenith]

I'd use dd.

However, unless you are used to it, it can certainly cause disasters very easily. I had one or two when I first tried it years ago.

So if you haven't used dd before, it would be sensible to become familiar with it using an old spare system, where it doesn't matter if you mess it up.

Can the HDD from the SA be jumpered to be read only? If so that would be a useful precaution.

[Nominal Animal]

dd [...] can be a double-edged sword.

True. Most *nix command line tools will not ask if you are sure you want to shoot your grandma.

Exactly.  Which is why most of my advice related to dd use in #14 was about how to make sure your source and target devices are the ones you think they are.

I never trust assumptions, not even if they are my own.  It's better to verify, and be sure, before you pull the trigger. 

[fzabkar]

A vote for dd here as well. I've tried all kinds of crap backup tools for windows and none are good for professional use. The foolproof way is using dd. Now I always use a Linux machine for creating master copy hard disks/files (for production use in a factory).

FYI, DMDE runs on Linux ...

BTW, dd is only good for healthy storage devices. A better tool is ddrescue, and even better is HDDSuperClone. All are Linux software. DMDE does have configuration options to tune its error recovery behaviour, but it is not as good as the specialised cloning tools. If you have a really bad HDD that goes offline when it hits bad patches in the media, the pro version of HDDSuperClone (now open source) can operate a power relay to reset the drive. Otherwise you would need to baby-sit it.

[Hugoneus]

Yeah better be very VERY careful when using linux dd. It can wreck all of the data if the wrong parameters are put in.

My own solution is "EaseUS Todo Backup Free" it has a horrible name, but it can clone drives 1:1. Most of the reason i use it is that it can also resize partitions afterwards, so it comes pretty useful in moving the OS from a HDD to a SSD.

Another useful tip is that WinHex has the ability to open disk drives in raw form, letting you explore the contents of a drive as raw sectors and copy things around by hand. It can be used to do things like manually fix a damaged partition table or do forensic analysis on data left behind by the filesystem.

EaseUS does not work. As I said, there is no file structure, no partition, nothing at all. It is purely sector written data as if it was in some memory location.

[KE5FX]

I haven't seen anything that Clonezilla can't handle, myself.  You can put it on a bootable USB drive, no need to install anything, run Linux, etc.

Avoid the commercial Windows tools like Macrium, they are all basically malware these days.  Intentionally designed to run at startup time and be as difficult as possible to uninstall.

[Hugoneus]

I haven't seen anything that Clonezilla can't handle, myself.  You can put it on a bootable USB drive, no need to install anything, run Linux, etc.
Avoid the commercial Windows tools like Macrium, they are all basically malware these days.  Intentionally designed to be difficult to uninstall.

None of the options of Clonezilla worked (I did not try the command line directly). Since the disk has no partition or initialization, it just says it can't work with this drive.

[JohanH]

dd will create an 1:1 copy of the disk, even if it contains only zeros. If your goal is to only create a backup copy, this is enough. The file can then easily be written to a new disk, if desired.

ddrescue might be of some value if you wanted to analyze the data. I've only tried to use it a couple of times and it's kind of hard to use. You could try to use it to see if it finds some kind of structured data. I would copy the disk to a file first with dd, to not mess with the disk, then try to analyze the file with ddrescue or some other tool.