[wellylug] DD no go

[David Chord]

Hi all. 
 q

Ok, so want to back up but.. 
223648791
In the same place every time, dd quits. 

Command line is dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb 

Error is "dd: writing to `/dev/sdb' : Input/output error
8395977+0 records in
8395976+0 records out
4298739712 bytes (4.3 GB) copied, 701.827s, 6.1 MB/s

After the 2nd time I formatted sdb to fat32 (was a blank disk on the first 
run), no luck. 

Any advice?

OS is gparted's boot disk, downloaded within the last month. I could 
try "noerror" but won't until I am certain it's going to be safe.
 
Thanks in advance,
David Chord