pv is probably more useful: $ dd if=/dev/urandom count=1000 bs=1000000 | pv -s 1000000000 > foo 214MiB 0:00:16 [13.1MiB/s] [========================>

pv is probably more useful: $ dd if=/dev/urandom count=1000 bs=1000000 | pv -s 1000000000 > foo 214MiB 0:00:16 [13.1MiB/s] [========================> ] 22% ETA 0:00:55 Compare to ^T: $ dd if=/dev/urandom of=foo count=1000 bs=1000000 load: 1.76 cmd: dd 80097 running 0.00u 0.89s 11+0 records in 11+0 records out 11000000 bytes transferred in 0.947316 secs (11611752 bytes/sec) load: 1.76 cmd: dd 80097 running 0.00u 1.68s 22+0 records in 22+0 records out 22000000 bytes transferred in 1.746013 secs (12600134 bytes/sec) load: 1.76 cmd: dd 80097 running 0.00u 2.28s 31+0 records in 31+0 records out 31000000 bytes transferred in 2.392392 secs (12957742 bytes/sec) load: 1.76 cmd: dd 80097 running 0.00u 2.83s 38+0 records in 38+0 records out ....