3 ms·
dd found fame about 17 years ago when supposedly low-level copying gui applications would consistently not succeed in some cases for unknown reasons. dd worked
by Maursault 4y ago
dd found fame about 17 years ago when supposedly low-level copying gui applications would consistently not succeed in some cases for unknown reasons. dd worked where fancier copy applications were hit or miss. So while other methods will work, dd consistently also works. UNIX was designed redundantly intentionally. And I'm pretty sure the U stands for 'useless.'(yeah, jk)
- pseudostem 4y agoI first used it to dual boot windows (98 or NT4 I don't remember) and slackware. I can't remember specifics, but I dd ed the first 512B to a file and pointed the windows OS loader to that file. The specifics I don't remember are why I wanted to use the windows loader instead of LILO.
- Maursault 4y agodd is pretty old software. I just meant it entered the mainstream consciousness of self-techs (non-pros) and pirates simultaneously ~2004-2007.
- yrro 4y agoIndeed, most users are better off by launching GNOME Disks, going to the kebab menu, choosing Restore Disk Image & selecting the image and target disk interactively. Or running: $ gnome-disks --restore-disk-image=/etc/motd Behind the scenes it calls udisks, which uses polkit to ensure that the user is authorized to write to the target disk. Overall, the chances of a user typoing and wiping out the wrong disk are greatly reduced. They also get to see progress etc.