@ schneidz "hard to read your output".....I am just copy and paste from the terminal output.

It is correct that the 2T external drive is mounted at /media.

no offense, but you seem to not know how to navigate files on your computer. this makes no sense:
of=/dev/sdb1/DiskDump

it seems potentially destructive to just keep trying various combinations with dd.please put the results of the command you are running as well as the response from the pc in [code] tags so it is easier to follow.

OK, schneidz, no offense taken; of course I am having trouble and maybe it is because I can't read my directory tree. This machine doesn't have a program to take a screen shot, and I don't know what you mean about code tags. I put a command into terminal and it pumps out an answer that I copy and paste to this venue. If there is more to it, [code] tags, please instruct.

per your request:

fdisk -l returns nothing

mount
joseph@joseph-TravelMate-2300:~$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/joseph/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=joseph)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/Seagate Expansion Drive type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,default_permissions,blksize=4096)

df -h
joseph@joseph-TravelMate-2300:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 54G 25G 26G 49% /
udev 992M 4.0K 992M 1% /dev
tmpfs 200M 804K 199M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 999M 92K 999M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb1 1.9T 421G 1.5T 23% /media/Seagate Expansion Drive

Looks much better doesn't it ?. Use the "quote" button to see what I did for [code].

I can't believe this thread is stil active. Looks like you are using NTFS on the external - shouldn't matter, but I wouldn't.

1 members found this post helpful.

Boot the liveCD, plug in the external and run theseUse sudo if nothing comes back from any of the commands.

I am not in LiveCD at the moment so I cannot try your suggestion: "of=/whatever/floats/your/boat bs=4M"
What is the bs=4M?

Fatmac made a similar suggestion:
"mount /dev/sdb1/ on /mnt (using live CD) then dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/mnt/DiskDump bs=1M"

The external drive is mounted at /media so interpreting fatmac: of=/media/DiskDump bs=1M

OK I am back. The live cd hanged on the try/install splash screen. Do I hit the quote button before I paste or after?

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use Mounted on
/cow overlayfs 999M 80M 919M 8% /
udev devtmpfs 989M 4.0K 989M 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 400M 812K 399M 1% /run
/dev/sr1 iso9660 736M 736M 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 squashfs 702M 702M 0 100% /rofs
tmpfs tmpfs 999M 8.0K 999M 1% /tmp
none tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none tmpfs 999M 80K 999M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb1 fuseblk 1.9T 421G 1.5T 23% /media/Seagate Expansion Drive

---------- Post added 06-05-15 at 10:25 PM ----------

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsblk -l
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0 7:0 0 701.7M 1 loop /rofs
sda 8:0 0 55.9G 0 disk
sda1 8:1 0 53.9G 0 part
sda2 8:2 0 1K 0 part
sda5 8:5 0 2G 0 part [SWAP]
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
sr1 11:1 1 735.2M 0 rom /cdrom
sdb 8:16 0 1.8T 0 disk
sdb1 8:17 0 1.8T 0 part /media/Seagate Expansion Drive

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | tail -n 20
[ 82.187092] snd_intel8x0 0000:00:1f.5: setting latency timer to 64
[ 82.508162] intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 53225 usecs (2565 samples)
[ 82.508169] intel8x0: clocking to 48000
[ 83.816201] b44 ssb0:0: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex
[ 83.816209] b44 ssb0:0: eth0: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX
[ 83.816529] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready
[ 88.359031] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
[ 88.898197] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
[ 94.608033] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[ 317.112075] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[ 317.255298] scsi3 : usb-storage 1-3:1.0
[ 318.255721] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access Seagate Expansion Desk 0711 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 318.263327] sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 318.267062] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Spinning up disk..........ready
[ 325.292669] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907029167 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB)
[ 325.306066] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 325.306076] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 4f 00 00 00
[ 325.306918] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 325.329686] sdb: sdb1
[ 325.334422] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

[QUOTE=seabag;5372922]ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use Mounted on
/cow overlayfs 999M 80M 919M 8 /
udev devtmpfs 989M 4.0K 989M 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 400M 812K 399M 1% /run
/dev/sr1 iso9660 736M 736M 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 squashfs 702M 702M 0 100% /rofs
tmpfs tmpfs 999M 8.0K 999M 1% /tmp
none tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none tmpfs 999M 80K 999M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb1 fuseblk 1.9T 421G 1.5T 23% /media/Seagate Expansion Drive[COLOR="Silver"]

---------- Post added 06-05-15 at 10:25 PM ----------

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/cow overlayfs 999M 80M 919M 8% /
udev devtmpfs 989M 4.0K 989M 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 400M 812K 399M 1% /run
/dev/sr1 iso9660 736M 736M 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 squashfs 702M 702M 0 100% /rofs
tmpfs tmpfs 999M 8.0K 999M 1% /tmp
none tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none tmpfs 999M 80K 999M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb1 fuseblk 1.9T 421G 1.5T 23% /media/Seagate Expansion Drive

---------- Post added 06-05-15 at 10:33 PM ----------

I seems I don' t know how to use that quote trick

OK now I see how to use the qoute but it won' t let me now because it hasn' t been five minutes since I last posted that output

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/cow overlayfs 999M 80M 919M 8% /
udev devtmpfs 989M 4.0K 989M 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 400M 812K 399M 1% /run
/dev/sr1 iso9660 736M 736M 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 squashfs 702M 702M 0 100% /rofs
tmpfs tmpfs 999M 8.0K 999M 1% /tmp
none tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
none tmpfs 999M 80K 999M 1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb1 fuseblk 1.9T 421G 1.5T 23% /media/Seagate Expansion Drive

I thought I understood 'quote' but I guess I don't.

I want my replies to be easily read: how do use the quote?

xxx