I've got an SDcard which I had previously used as combined storage in my Android phone. Recently I needed to copy some files from my phone to my PC via USB. At some point during copying the SDcard became corrupt, as under system settings the system said so. Though only logically corrupted, as I could still physically read the card when connecting to my PC, just with barely any data on it. Fortunately I successfully copied my phone's entire DCIM folder along with some other stuff, so all my really important stuff has been secured (I really jumped the gun on that one). I knew that I should've rooted my phone, so I could've made a full image backup of my phone in case anything like this would happen. Then again, I didn't know that combining external SD and internal storage into one pool can be unstable on Android. It's only afterwards that I learned that it can indeed happen for the SDcard to become corrupt at some point, requiring you to reformat and re-add it to the system.

I want to reformat the SDcard, but before I do so, I want to make a 1:1 raw copy of the state of the bits on the SDcard, so that I can try and attempt to recover data from it at a later point. I found HDD Raw Copy Tool through Google, and I hope that it can get the job done. But I've got a few questions below that I need answered before I can try anything with some degree of confidence.

• Will HDD Raw Copy Tool not alter any bits on the card when a raw copy is being made?
  
• If I set my C: drive as my target drive, will HDD Raw Copy Tool overwrite any data on C: (even if there's sufficient free space for the raw copy)? Or will it just create an image of the source drive and place the file somewhere on C: (no file location is being asked when doing so)?
  
• Which file format will HDD Raw Copy Tool use to copy a drive? And will that file format be compatible with third party recovery software?
  
• Is it perfectly fine to use HDD Raw Copy Tool over USB? It concerns an SD card, so it's not like I've got much choice, but still asking to get a better understanding of HDD Raw Copy Tool.
  
• Would you recommend a tool that you find better than HDD Raw Copy Tool?

There are several tools for that: DMDE, DDRescue, HDDsuperclone, that I recall now...

When making a clone image, it will create a perfect copy of the original sector by sector.
If you choose to create a image file on C: it will not overwrite nothing.

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What can those tools do that HDD Raw Copy Tool won't for my task?

I'm not very familiar with HDD Raw Copy, but for instance HDDSuperclone can probably deal much better with bad sectors, sector skip, reverse copy, PIO mode, etc, etc.

Why don't you take a look at it and compare?

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+1

I have played with HDDSuperclone a bit and it's pretty need for a s/w only solution!

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Because I'm in disaster mode where I haven't got the time and focus to compare software. I started this topic to get help from people who've went through what I'm going through now, so that I don't repeat the same mistakes. Besides I don't know how to compare the software (which criteria I should look for), how I could run the software as I don't have Linux at hand, and if it is wise to test the software out on a subject (storage device) from which I intend to recover data from (i.e. in that during testing it might make matters worse).