I need to clone a pendrive to VHD file (preferably for free). I hoped it will be trivial (assuming VHD is not much different conceptually from the file made using dd under Unix, just a sectors copied one by one for a block device), turns out it is not.
Absolutely best would be a program that will either convert dd produced file to VHD, or read the pendrive and save the content in VHD. Windows, linux, doesn't matter.
There are plenty of cloning programs, but either I am missing something, or none of them does the job the way I need it (and I need the clone to be an exact copy, from which deleted files can be recovered). The closest one to what I am looking for is disk2vhd tool from sysinternals, it nicely copies directory information so that recuva sees deleted files entries, but instead of fixed size VHD it produces a dynamic size VHD and omits clusters marked in the FAT table as unused, so it is useless for my needs.
Note: this is for a puzzle/forensic riddle project. I already sold several hundreds pendrives containing the thing (in Polish), I am trying to prepare a cheaper, downloadable version. Pendrive is made so that it looks like it was used for several years to transfer files between several computers, and the information about deleted files is part of the project (it is designed in such a way files worth of recovering are not corrupted). The concept is proven in silico, all I need is to clone it, not reinvent.
