There's a collision here between Ubuntu trying to do the right thing automatically (that's part of Ubuntu's design philosophy AIUI) and the author's need to hav

There's a collision here between Ubuntu trying to do the right thing automatically (that's part of Ubuntu's design philosophy AIUI) and the author's need to have nothing done at all. I think the Ubuntu live image is therefore unsuitable for this kind of work. What was needed here is a more specialist "rescue" system image that has a "forensic" mode. For example, Finnix has this: https://www.finnix.org/Forensics https://www.finnix.org/Forensics