Imaging Original 20Gb Drive

[underground]

I have an 80Gb DMS, hacked Box and my original 20Gb DMS which I used to create the 80Gb DMS.
As I have no use for the 20 anymore I was thinking about flogging it on ebay. However, in case I ever need to create another DMS for whatever reason (fails, larger drive etc), can i create an image of my original 20Gb DMS for future use?
If so, would i have to copy this image back onto a 2.5" hdd and use as I did on the orginal hack, or can I use the image directly? (hope that makes sense). Do i need anything special to make the clone/image?
Many thanks

[sbingner]

All you need to save is a dd dump of the first 1MB of that drive... and I dont think you really even need that, since I've been unable to duplicate a problem with lack of signature.  I think it could be incorrect partitioning or something that caused problems before.   Of course if somebody can duplicate the problems I'd like to fix that too

[underground]

OK, many thanks.....now call me stupid BUT..........
HOW do i save dd dump of the 1st 1Mb of the drive?
IN FACT.......what the heck IS a dd dump?

[sbingner]

Why don't you just try a new drive without using the hack cd, like I said I'm not convinced that it's necessary at all

[S80_UK]

underground,

The use of dd is documented elsewhere on this forum.  There is also a link to a Windows compatible version of the utility.  

How to use it described here

http://forum.phathack.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1123119033/1#1

Where to get the Windows version is here

http://forum.phathack.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1122269702/1#1

Effectively, dd allows you to take a sector by sector copy of a hard disk and save it as a file.  You can also restore to a disk from this file.  In the context of the DMS, this allows a single file to hold details of the disk partion table, and the hard disk signature data that is matched to its firmware serial number located in the software of the drive controller (nothing to do with the serial numbers of formatted partitions)

The purpose was to allow folks to copy parts of this data from one drive to another.  But as indicated above, this may not be necessary if your box is already hacked and working.

Les.

[A543]

Keep in mind the possibility of getting a Phatbox with no DMS. You will need an original DMS to crack it.

[A543]

Why don't you just try a new drive without using the hack cd

There's more than just the signature in that 1 meg. The keys in there are required, AFAIK. The hack disc will copy that data over.

[sbingner]

I've been unable to duplicate the requirement for those keys on my system... which is why I said that...  if I could duplicate that, I'd be working on removing the requirement