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Dd

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Man page:dd

Usage

shell

dd OPTIONS

Option	Description
`if`	Input file.
`of`	Output file.
`bs`	Read and write up to SIZE at a time (default 512 bytes).
`oflag`	Write as per the comma separated symbol list.
`count`	Copy only N input blocks.
`status`	Information to print to stderr. `none`: only errors; `noxfer`: no final transfer statistics; `progress`: periodic transfer statistics.

Run sync at the end to be sure all data was written to the device (requires root).

Write ISO into a drive (sudo needed):

shell

sudo dd if=linux.iso of=/dev/sda bs=4M
sudo sync

Benchmark write speed of a disk (for read speed use hdparm):

shell

dd if=/dev/zero of=ddfile oflag=direct bs=128k count=16k; rm ddfile  # Write 2GiB file