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hal_v
Asked: 2017-07-07 14:29:39 +0800 CST

What is this image.dd file?

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I'm running MATE 16.04 on an ASUS X550LA and have a 2.1Gb file named "image.dd" type "unknown". I tried opening it but nothing happened. Running man dd in the terminal returned Convert and copy a file

  1. What is it?
  2. Is it necessary?
  3. What effect would deleting it have?

Three questions in one I know but they are linked.

dd

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    1) My best guess would be that it's an image file created with dd of some sort of media like a flash drive or memory card.

    2 and 3) Whether it's necessary or not depends on your definition of necessary. The operating system should run just fine without it, however it may contain data that you'd rather keep.

    You can test my theory easily by using the command parted image.dd

    which will result in output similar to but probably not identical to this.

    Using /home/me/Desktop/image.dd
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted)

    issuing the command print at the (parted) prompt will provide output similar to but definitely not identical to this

    Model:  (file)

Disk /home/me/Desktop/image.dd: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End    Size    File system  Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  420MB  419MB   ntfs         Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 2      420MB   693MB  273MB   fat32        EFI system partition          boot
 3      693MB   827MB  134MB                Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 4      827MB   470GB  469GB   ntfs         Basic data partition          msftdata
 5      470GB   470GB  891MB   ntfs                                       hidden, diag
 6      470GB   471GB  472MB   ntfs                                       hidden, diag
 7      471GB   500GB  29.2GB  ntfs         Basic data partition          hidden, msftdata

(parted)

    once you have your output enter quit at the (parted) prompt to exit parted.

    In your specific case, the image does not appear to have a partition table as shown above, but as it's an image of a storage device it has Sector Size info.

    If you wish to peruse the content to insure you aren't deleting something you want, there are several answers here on how to mount an image as a loop device.

    This is a fairly simple procedure and since there's no partition table you don't need an offset.

    mount -o loop image.dd mountpoint where mountpoint is the location on the tree where you wish to mount it. You may wish to create a mountpoint in advance.

    For example: 

    mkdir /media/test 
mount -o loop image.dd /media/test
ls /media/test

    To make the directory

    loop mount the image file

    and list the content at the root of the image

    • 4

  2. image.dd could be the disk image file created by the TestDisk utility (used to recover deleted files) and deleting it does no harm to the system in this case just make sure it doesn't contain important files.

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