I have a windows 8.1 Pro laptop with a 500GB HD and a 500GB portable USB HD.
I boot up my laptop with a linux live CD so that I can use dd or cat.
Testing cat:
cat /dev/sda > /dev/sdc cat: write error: No space left on device Testing dd:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc bs=4096 dd: error writing L/dev/sdcL: No space left on device 1+0 records in 0+0 records out 0 bytes (0 B) copied. 0.0kB/s When running fdisk -l I can see that my laptop HD has been assigned to /dev/sda and my external HD to /dev/sdc
However fdisk shows some unexpected info for the /dev/sdc section:
fdisk -l Disk /dev/sdc: 10MiB, 10485768 bytes, 20400 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes ... Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 * 2048 718847 358400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sdc2 718848 81922047 40601600 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT The /dev/sdc external hd shows its only 10MiB in size.
What can I do to correct this issue?
I have tried using fdisk /dev/sdc to delete all partitions on the device, but after doing this cat and dd still return the same error message.
Another thing thats confusing is arn't cat and dd supposed to clone the source(laptop) hd and copy it to the target(external)? so the fact that my external HD having a different partition setup/config shouldnt matter right? Because the source disk is overwriting whatever is there with itself... Why should its setup make any difference? On a bare metal level the HD is 500GB, I thought that was the purpose of dd to clone the Entire Disk byte for byte. If it takes into consideration the setup of the external HD clearly its not cloning byte for byte as its giving authority to the external disk.
Update
lsblk returns
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE sda 0:0 0 465.9G 0 disk >^sda1 0:1 0 350M 0 part >^sda2 0:2 0 38.7G 0 part sdc 8:32 0 465.8G 0 disk loop0 7:0 0 275.1M 0 loop /livemnt/squashfs gdisk -l /dev/sdc returns
.... Partition table scan: MBR: MBR only BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: not present ********************************** Found invalid GTP and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format in memory. ********************************** ... Connecting and dissconnecting the external HD makes the /dev/sdc drive appear and dissappear.
fdisk -l is reporting that the disk /dev/sdc is only 10MiB. How can it report this when we have no partitions?
ddshould trash the partition table on your external drive. It shouldn't fail after 0 records either, nor mentionsdc1in its error message.lsblkandgdisk -l /dev/sdcbecause it is a bit unclear what is going on./dev/sdcreally your external HD? (If you disconnect your external HD does/dev/sdcdisappear? If you reconnect it, does/dev/sdcreappear?) Remember that because you're booting from a Live CD, the disk devices may not necessarily appear in the order you might expect ordinarily.