Copying A Disk

[Pete Holsberg]

Marius Gedminas has written on 7/11/2008 7:08 PM:
> 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.
>   

Thank you.
>> 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.
>
>   
>> How do I edit the resulting file?
>>     
>
> What does it mean to "edit" a disk image?
>
> If you made an image of a filesystem rather than the whole disk (i.e.
> used /dev/sdXY where X is the disk letter and Y is the partition
> number), then you could mount it with
>
>   mount -o loop,ro filename /mnt/mnt
>
> and then access all the files on it.
>   

Excellent. How do I find out the numbers of the partitions on the disk?

And do I have to mount it or something, or will just connecting the 
SATA/USB adapter to a USB port be sufficient?

Tahnsk so much for the detailed answer.