create a bootable USB drive | dd cheat-sheet

What is dd ? 🔗

dd is a tool to convert and copy a file.

Usage patterns 🔗

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=4M conv=fsync if=/dev/source_drive of=/dev/dest_drive

or

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 write performance of a disk:

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

or

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

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

kill -USR1 $(pgrep -x dd)

For more information, checkout the official manual page on dd GNU util: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/dd-invocation.html .

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