dd

Copies data at block level between files or devices.

Ubuntu CentOS Debian Arch SUSE Slackware Alpine Fedora FreeBSD OpenBSD NetBSD Solaris Illumos

Verified: 2026-05-12

Syntax

$dd if=INPUT of=OUTPUT [OPTIONS]

Examples

$dd if=/dev/zero of=test.img bs=1M count=100

$dd if=/dev/sda of=/backup/disk.img bs=4M status=progress

$dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync

Typical use cases

Standard usage

dd --help

Note Low-level utility for imaging, cloning, and recovery.

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