I need to backup an HDD in raw mode. I want to backup all data, partition tables, boot and so on. I have tried Clonezilla but it fails because of a dirty bit on a NTFS volume.
I woruld like to migrate everything to a new bigger disk, and then start working on data recovery. This is why I need a raw copy, and Clonezilla seems to be not suitable, as far as I saw, it checks the NTFS dirty bit.
I'm using Windows, but I can also start a live-cd like Clonezilla.
13 Answers
You will have to run the clone (disk to local disk clone) with the -sfsck option. This bypasses the checks if the source is OK and just tries to copy everything without checking.
If that doesn't work (too many read-errors) get a GPartED Live USB. This contains (among other things) also the command-line utility ddrescue which is specialized in copying from a bad disk.
When dealing with a data recovery issue there is no shortcut other than duplicating the total drive.
Use ddrescue, a free and open source tool from the GNU foundation. It is contained in many live Linux distributions like in GParted where the CD ISO is only 300-400MB.
Do not confound ddrescue with dd_rescue from Kurt Garloff. dd_rescue has a different command syntax!
The regular dd command in Linux does not handle bad sectors as smart as ddrescue.
I am not aware of tools in the Windows world that have dedicated strategies to duplicate drives fast despite of the existence of bad sectors.
I present you two options:
Clonezilla: If you use Clonezilla you could set the option -q1 (in expert mode) and it will use dd to make the copy sector-by-sector. If your source disk has bad sectors you should also set the option -rescue to ignore bad sectors.
OSFClone:OSFClone is a specifc tool (bootable) to make a forensic copy of a disk, exact raw.
