Hi Friedrich, while you're likely much better versed in your goals than what I likely know how to do I couldn't help but ponder what exactly you're trying to accomplish by copying the ISO to the seemingly unpartitioned hard disk /dev/sda, if I've followed along correctly.
*> which I encountered during copying this ISO image over.*
If you were trying to write the ISO as-is for bootable reuse wouldn't you use DD to write the image as it stands? Otherwise if keeping the ISO as an ISO was your goal wouldn't you need to create a basic partition table, mount the partition (ie /dev/sda1 to /mnt) then *cp archlinux.iso /mnt* ? Hello,
What Friedrich does is not only perfectly valid, but this is the suggested method.⁽¹⁾ Nothing should be mounted, the file should be simply copied to another file. `dd` is still listed in Arch Wiki, because anybody caring got tired of reverting that or correcting yet another “improvement” somebody adds. Dealing with aftermath of using `dd` seems much more efficient than going on a pointless crusade. Cheers ____ ⁽¹⁾ https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_flash_installation_medium#Using_basic_c...