Jumpwire: dd: error reading '/dev/sda': Input/output error [Librem 5]

Hardware Librem 5
1

Hello everyone!

I am attempting to backup my device but have achingly slow transfer speeds.
Is this a common concern? Is there anything I can do to help improve these speeds?

Thank you all so much for any help!!!

usr@pop-os:~/Backups$ lsblk
NAME      MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
sdb         8:16   1  29.1G  0 disk  
├─sdb1      8:17   1   465M  0 part  /media/usr/<ID>
└─sdb2      8:18   1  28.7G  0 part  
sdc         8:32   1     0B  0 disk  
zram0     251:0    0    16G  0 disk  [SWAP]
nvme0n1   259:0    0 465.8G  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1
│         259:1    0   976M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2
│         259:2    0   3.8G  0 part  /recovery
└─nvme0n1p3
          259:3    0   461G  0 part  
  └─cryptdata
          252:0    0   461G  0 crypt 
    └─data-root
          252:1    0   461G  0 lvm   /

usr@pop-os:~/Backups$ sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=librem5-jul22025-backup.image status=progress
8523264 bytes (8.5 MB, 8.1 MiB) copied, 1198 s, 7.1 kB/s^C
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I realize now that I put /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sdb. What is /dev/sdb

edit: nevermind, it appears once i rebooted the machine to attempt again the device appeared as sda

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With dd it’s important to define the blocksize (bs=) size, as in how big pieces are transferred. Try bs= 1024 or even bs=4096. Unfortunately, i’m not sure what the optimal size for L5 is (could be tested like this), but both of those have been suggested in the past.

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/dev/sda appears to return an error:

usr@pop-os:~/Backups$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=librem5-jul22025-backup.image status=progress
5770752 bytes (5.8 MB, 5.5 MiB) copied, 31 s, 185 kB/s
dd: error reading '/dev/sda': Input/output error
12776+0 records in
12776+0 records out
6541312 bytes (6.5 MB, 6.2 MiB) copied, 92.6538 s, 70.6 kB/s
usr@pop-os:~/Backups$
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5

Something’s not right, dude.

I have records from doing a couple of these and I am getting 50 MB/s ± a few MB/s. That’s not spectacular (9-11 minutes to complete) but is still viable.

Random observation: You should always umount any and all partitions of a disk device before backing it up with dd.

A couple of differences between what you have done and what I did:

  • I added bs=1M to the dd command.
  • I am piping the output of dd through gzip (which helps if the disk is not close to full).
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/dev/sdx is the disk device in its entirety

/dev/sdxN is the Nth partition of the disk device

When using dd to make a disk image, you must use the former.

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Optime, I shall try again with umount /dev/sda*

Thank you so much for your help

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PS Per topic title, I assume we are talking about Jump‍drive, not Jump‍wire.

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