Backing up a raw disk as an image

[Goi]

Hi,

Are there any commercial/freeware/open source applications(preferably freeware/open source) that support backing up of a raw disk(no partition data) in a USB enclosure as an image file on another connected hard drive?

I have Acronis 10, but it doesn't even detect my disk when using the "backup" option, and only accepts the disk as an output disk in the "clone" option since it thinks it's an empty disk.

I've also tried EaseUs DiskCopy 2.3 but it does not seem to support USB drives as source drives.

I've also tried Miray HDClone but the free version does not seem to support backing up as an image file.

Thanks!

 

[Blazer]

if the disk has no partition info then it wont contain any data, to store info on the hd it would have to be partitioned first.

 

[Nothinman]

if the disk has no partition info then it wont contain any data, to store info on the hd it would have to be partitioned first.

Not true at all. I recently got two new drives, mirrored, encrypted and added them to an LVM volume group then created a logical volume from there. All of that without any partitions involved.

Pretty much any Linux tool should be able to do what you want, just point it to the block device instead of a partition on it, i.e. /dev/sda instead of /dev/sda1.

 

[Blazer]

his application must contain some variant of linux or maybe a spanned volume.

 

[Nothinman]

his application must contain some variant of linux or maybe a spanned volume.

A volume from a variant of Linux or OS X is the most likely, but I'm sure I could come up with other cases too. Hell, when doing forensics on a disk the first thing you do is create an exact image of the disk so that nothing you do can affect the data. Anything that tries to be smart and do things like only grab used space or compress data is only going to invalidate your work.

 

[Blazer]

never was sucessfull at getting any form of linux installed, following directions or not, and never owned a Mac, would a linux live cd image a raw drive ?

 

[Emulex]

C0 ff 33

 

[Nothinman]

never was sucessfull at getting any form of linux installed, following directions or not, and never owned a Mac, would a linux live cd image a raw drive ?

Yea, an Ubuntu LiveCD is fully functional. You can even install software and such while in the LiveCD. Just remember that any changes you make will be lost on shutdown.

 

[Goi]

Thanks for the suggestion.

The drive is encrypted & I'm backing up the encrypted data, which is why it's "raw data" and does not have any meaningful partition data.

The Linux dd command would certainly work, but would be unwieldy as this will be performed be people not necessarily familiar with Linux.

I've found that WinHex is able to perform this operation in a fairly user-friendly way but I'm still open to more idiot proof methods.

Thanks again for all suggestions.

 

[Nothinman]

Have you tried a LiveCD with partimage or Clonezilla?