Linux – How to do a hexdump of first track of HDD

ddhard drivelinuxUbuntu

How would i do a hexdump in Ubuntu for the first track of a HDD?

I am looking for a winhex-esque output if that makes sense. The first track has 63 sectors, each 512 bytes long. I tried 

dd if=/dev/sda bs=1 count=512 | hexdump -C

but that only gave me what appears to be the MBR, or first sector of the HDD. I guess i am confused about what bs and count should be. Bs means how many bytes to display and count is how many multiples of bs? Thanks!

Best Answer

bs is the block size, in bytes, and count is the number of those blocks to grab. So the command you actually want to dump the first track is:

dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=63 | hexdump -C

The dd man page might be of help.

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