Funny you should mention OS X. Something I learned only yesterday is that if you're using dd to write an .img file to an SD card (may apply to other disk types

Funny you should mention OS X. Something I learned only yesterday is that if you're using dd to write an .img file to an SD card (may apply to other disk types as well I imagine), using /dev/rdisk devices instead of /dev/disk devices can be much faster; in my case using the /dev/rdisk device wrote to the SD card at nearly 20 MB/sec, vs the 2 MB/sec speed I got when using /dev/disk. See the second answer here as to why: http://superuser.com/questions/631592/why-is-dev-rdisk-about-20-times-faster-than-dev-disk-in-mac-os-x http://superuser.com/questions/631592/why-is-dev-rdisk-about...