Any reason this won't work? (dd copy of disk w/ Linux booted from USB)

[exscape]

OK, here's the deal. I need service done on my MBP, but would rather not give them the HDD content clear as day. My plan is the following:

1) Boot from a Linux USB stick that needs little more than samba or AFP mounting support and dd; mount my server and do "dd if=/dev/sdx of=/server/path/disk.image"
2) Wipe the disk and install Snow Leopard, in case they need to do testing in-OS.
3) Give them the computer.
4) When I get it back, boot from the USB stick again, reversing if= and of= to write the image to the disk.
5) Done, everything works exactly as before.

Am I missing anything, or will this work? I'm mostly worried re: EFI, but I don't really see *why* it would cause problems.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tex-Twil]

OK, here's the deal. I need service done on my MBP, but would rather not give them the HDD content clear as day. My plan is the following:

1) Boot from a Linux USB stick that needs little more than samba or AFP mounting support and dd; mount my server and do "dd if=/dev/sdx of=/server/path/disk.image"
2) Wipe the disk and install Snow Leopard, in case they need to do testing in-OS.
3) Give them the computer.
4) When I get it back, boot from the USB stick again, reversing if= and of= to write the image to the disk.
5) Done, everything works exactly as before.

Am I missing anything, or will this work? I'm mostly worried re: EFI, but I don't really see *why* it would cause problems.

Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure if you will be able to boot from the USB. I wasn't able to do it with windows. See this post.

 

[exscape]

I'm not sure if you will be able to boot from the USB. I wasn't able to do it with windows. See this post.

Hm, that sucks. So far, I haven't even gotten the stick to boot on a regular PC, lol. I have no idea why not; I'm not really clueless in these areas.

Anyway, this is probably moot by now as I decided to switch my 5400rpm 160GB drive to a 7200rpm 500GB one, making the sector-by-sector clone a bad idea. I'll have to use Time Machine instead.