[Tfug] Disk editing

[Bexley Hall]

> I've got an oddball piece of kit with a disk in it.
> The disk doesn't use a "recognized" partition table.
> I want to edit the partition table but can't use
> any traditional partition editors as the format of
> the partition table is so bogus.
> 
> So, I need to just be able to patch a sector on the
> drive.
> 
> Any suggestions as to how I can reliably do this?
> Note that I can't write anything to the disk (other
> than the sector in question) as the filesystem on
> the disk is incomprehensible to anything other than
> the device itself!
> 
> My first guess is to dd(1) the first sector onto a
> floppy (I think I can coax the device into letting me
> do this).  Then, edit the image on the floppy and
> dd(1) it back onto the raw drive.
> 
> This is obviously a kludge but I *think* it is a
> safe approach?

This worked (using a thumb drive instead of a floppy).