On Saturday 05 Jan 2013 02:26:18 Walter Dnes wrote:

>   One last gasp... were you doing this as root?  Regular users cannot dd
> directly to a device, for obvious reasons.

Yes, also tried it as root.  No change.  BTW, with the device mounted I 
shouldn't have a problem with dd on a file.
-- 
Regards,
Mick