On 11/05/13 22:56, Rock wrote: > On Sat, 11 May 2013 21:27:59 +1000, Anthony K wrote: > >> I'd suggest you still make a copy of the disk with dd and >> work on the image! > Key questions: > Q0. Should I boot to my normal Centos 6 OS? > Q1: Should I format the new USB hard disk with Fdisk? > Q2: What dd command should I use? Having read your earlier posts, I believe you are quite capable of sorting out Q0 and Q1. For Q0 though, I normally use pmagic live CD. For Q2, I once ran some tests to determine the optimum blocksize to use with dd and discovered that anything over 4096 didn't increase throughput much. However, I still use 4M when working with dd to dump a hdd image: dd if=/dev/sda of=/path/to/hdd-image-file.img bs=4M After dumping the image, refer to testdisk wiki [0] on how to mount the image file. If you require some hand holding working with testdisk, please contact me off-list. Cheers, ak. [0] - http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_FAQ#How_to_open_the_image.dd_file_.3F