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

[IanB]

And in that lies the problem. i do NOT want to modify the file system or permissions ! Just read the file without altering anything on the drive. it should leave no traces. the drive needs to be treated as read-only.

But the default Windows file permissions on NTFS allow full control to Administrators and the System account. So it would have to be a special case where you couldn't read the disk without modifying permissions.

[paul_g_787]

Clonezilla has an advanced option to do a bit for bit copy if I remember rightly. It literally copies 1s and 0s. I would guess it may even use dd under the hood.

I used this option some years ago to clone a dying PS3 120GB HDD to another disk without losing the encrypted FS and MBR.

[J-R]

Clonezilla absolutely does have a dd imaging option, but at that point might as well just use dd from your favorite Linux live USB stick.


For NTFS, lots of imaging programs allow browsing a backup via the Windows Explorer.  I use Macrium for this quite often.  It has an image mount option that does basically ignore all NTFS permissions on the source and allows you full access of all the files in the backup image.

I don't think this helps if your source drive is not NTFS.

User directories are particularly common to have a different username set for the permissions, so when you place it in another computer you won't have access directly, even as an admin.

[Nominal Animal]

i do NOT want to modify the file system or permissions ! Just read the file without altering anything on the drive. it should leave no traces. the drive needs to be treated as read-only.

Clone it first, and do your alterations and examinations on a read-write copy?

(Again, while mounting it read-only and giving you full access override can be done in a single command line command in Linux (the one in #44), I do not know of any proper UI tools that do it.  And I definitely recommend *against* having someone write a script or GUI for it.  This kind of tool has to be rock solid and reliable.)

[free_electron]

that's what i do now. i have a hardware drive cloner. (startech) plug in two drives (source and target) and hit one button. target needs to be larger or equal to source.
it takes a while though , but it copies anything. the cloner is ide so i need to use ide to sata adapters to go to ssd or modern drives but it works.
then work off the clone.

it would be nice to be able to ditch all that stuff. have a bootable usb stick with a drive imaging tool that can save the drive image , and a file explorer where i can quickly grab some stuff and copy it off. something i can drop on ventoy (ventoy is a special usb bootable that lets you launch iso files. simply write a collection of iso files to it and at boot you can select which one needs to launch. i keep all install medium for various os's on there. so an iso that contains what i need (cloner/imager/file access) would be great.

if i need to redeploy : access with file grabber , copy the two or three files i need , reboot from install iso , install , copy files back. no need to remove drives , hook up cables. simply boot from usb

[Ed.Kloonk]

it would be nice to be able to ditch all that stuff. have a bootable usb stick with a drive imaging tool that can save the drive image , and a file explorer where i can quickly grab some stuff and copy it off.

What's stopping you?

[free_electron]

it would be nice to be able to ditch all that stuff. have a bootable usb stick with a drive imaging tool that can save the drive image , and a file explorer where i can quickly grab some stuff and copy it off.

What's stopping you?

what's stopping me is finding a ready made iso that can do that !