4 ms·

Why are you using dd for USB disks?

• danieldk 10y ago
  Writing bootable installation images?
  • chungy 10y ago
    You could use cp.
    • feld 10y ago
      Explain?
    • jsjohnst 10y ago
      cp is designed to copy data across file systems. dd is designed to copy raw block data across devices. Sure, you can abuse both for either purpose, but seems rather misguided to call it out explicitly. What did you intend to gain by doing it?
      • chungy 10y ago
        cp is designed to copy data from one file to another. Block devices are represented as files, and cp won't be speed limited by block size. dd is also designed to copy data from one file to another, in blocks, with optional conversion of the data (eg, from EBCDIC to ASCII), and with optional offsets/limits to copy regions of a file. dd is not designed to copy raw block data, it is merely a different file copy tool.
      • sz4kerto 10y ago
        You don't know what cp is for. cp is exactly for copying data from a file to another file -- and under Unix, devices are represented as files. Using cp for writing disk ISOs to an USB drive is proper use, not abuse. dd is for transform-and-copy, so you're abusing dd when writing disk ISOs. The fact that most of the Internet is wrong doesn't make you any less wrong.
  • sz4kerto 10y ago
    You should use cp, that's just better for this task. "dd is not a disk writing tool" http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=479 http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=479