community man page

dd

Convert and copy a file.

11 examples·source: tldr · CC-BY·status: verified

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curl https://curlhub.sh/man/dd

same page, in your terminal

Examples

Make a bootable USB drive from an isohybrid file (such as `archlinux-xxx.iso`) and show the progress GNU

sudo dd status=progress if=path/to/file.iso of=/dev/usb_drive

Clone a drive to another drive with 4 MiB block size and flush writes before the command terminates GNU

sudo dd bs=4M conv=fsync if=/dev/source_drive of=/dev/dest_drive

Generate a file with a specific number of random bytes by using kernel random driver GNU

dd bs=100 count=1 if=/dev/urandom of=path/to/random_file

Benchmark the write performance of a disk GNU

dd bs=1M count=1024 if=/dev/zero of=path/to/file_1GB

Create a system backup, save it into an IMG file (can be restored later by swapping `if` and `of`), and show the progress GNU

sudo dd status=progress if=/dev/drive_device of=path/to/file.img

Check the progress of an ongoing `dd` operation (run this command from another shell) GNU

progress

Make a bootable USB drive from an isohybrid file (such as `archlinux-xxx.iso`) and show the progress

dd if=path/to/file.iso of=/dev/usb_drive status=progress

Clone a drive to another drive with 4 MiB block size and flush writes before the command terminates

dd bs=4194304 conv=fsync if=/dev/source_drive of=/dev/dest_drive

Generate a file with a specific number of random bytes by using kernel random driver

dd bs=100 count=1 if=/dev/urandom of=path/to/random_file

Benchmark the sequential write performance of a disk

dd bs=1024 count=1000000 if=/dev/zero of=path/to/file_1GB

Create a system backup, save it into an IMG file (can be restored later by swapping `if` and `of`), and show the progress

dd if=/dev/drive_device of=path/to/file.img status=progress