But Rick, the OP was trying to dd into /dev/sda
How can it be that the system boots off of some disk that is not /dev/sda,
and /dev/sda is empty? and is a usb flash???
Also, why would the op get a message to the effect "disk is full"
when it is a 32GB flash?
My suspicion is that it is not a USB disk, and that it is a very old and small IDE disk.
-JD