Linux dd issues part 2

I spoke in the last few posts about the issues with dd both in Windows and Linux. Having recommended in a previous post that you use dd_rescue with the -d flag added to enable direct disk access I have since found that when running it from the Helix distro it appears to work but instead creates a 0 byte file. I can't get my head around why it would do this.

However, following more research it appears that using GNU-dd in Linux you can enable the iflag=direct argument. This seems to enable O_DIRECT disk access and avoid the seeming buffering issues. Testing this against a drive with no errors it acquired the drive as expected and provided the right hash, so at least it doesn't mess things up.

Interestingly I emailed Barry Grundy about it and he had been following the same line of research and testing. Both of us are away from our labs for a week or so and will not be able to test against a drive with bad sectors until then but I will post again.

If you wish to try it the syntax is simple:-

dd if=/dev/(drive) of = (where you save it) conv=noerror iflag=direct

If you get any interesting results please don't hesitate to contact me.