ISOs, DD and HDIUTIL - Backup Preparation
I moved recently, and as part of that mess, discovered a number of old hard disks, CDs and DVDs that had just been sitting in boxes and closets. Now, I know that most of this data is trash since I haven't used it in some time and really haven't missed it. I try telling myself that I should just destroy it and move on. But still in the back of my mind, I know that there are files and work on those disks that I would like to salvage. So, inspired by the recent launch of the AWS Glacier service, I've decided to undertake a significant archaeological task. I picked up two disk enclosures and outfitted my 09 Mac Mini with two additional DVD drives. The plan is to bust out my Computer Forensics skills, and pull all of the data off the disks raw. At the same time, go parallel and rip as much removable media to ISO's as I can three at a time. With the data pulled, compressed and encrypted, I'll push each blob up to Glacier. Once I get really motivated, I'll start pulling each blob down and picking them apart using something like ProDiscover. Using ProDiscover I'll be able to pull both live files and those I had mistakenly deleted.
For those interested in doing something similar, here are a few basic commands to make your ISO ripping a cinch.
Rip a CD to a Joliet formatted ISO using HDIUTIL
hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o image.iso /path/to/source
Raw byte by byte copy using DD
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/destination/path/cdrom.iso
A note on dd - be sure that the drive you're ripping has been unmounted prior to using dd.