dd
Convert and copy a file.
More information: https://manned.org/man/dd.1p.
- Make a bootable USB drive from an isohybrid file (such as
archlinux-xxx.iso
):
dd 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:
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 and save it into an IMG file (can be restored later by swapping
if
and of
):
dd if=/dev/drive_device of=path/to/file.img