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Learn Linux DD Command - 15 Examples With

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June 24, 2011 | By Leena More
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The Linux command ‘dd’ is one of the most powerful utility which can be used in a variety of
ways. This tool is mainly used for copying and converting data, hence it stands for ‘data
duplicator’.

This tool can be used for:

• Backing up and restoring an entire hard drive or a partition.

• Copy regions of raw device files like backing up MBR (master boot record).

• Converting data formats like ASCII to EBCDIC.

• Converting lowercase to uppercase and vice versa.

• Creating files with fixed size.

Only superuser can execute this command. You should be very careful while using this
command as improper usage may cause huge data loss. So, some people consider this tool as
‘data destroyer’.

Syntax of ‘dd’ command.

dd if=<source file name> of=<target file name> [Options]

We will learn the various ‘options’ while going through the examples.

1. Backing up and restoring an entire hard drive or a partition.

a. Backup entire hard drive to another drive.

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 conv=noerror,sync

Here, ‘if’ stands for input file , ‘of’ stands for output file and ‘bs’ stands for the block size
(number of bytes to be read/write at a time). The conversion parameter ‘noerror’ allows the tool
to continue to copy the data even though it encounter any errors. The sync option allows to use
synchronized I/O.

The above command will copy all the data from the disk /dev/sda to /dev/sdb. ‘dd’ doesn’t know
anything about the filesystem or partitions; it will just copy everything from /dev/sda to /dev/sdb.
So, this will clone the disk with the same data on same partition.

b. Creating a disk image.

dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/sdadisk.img

Backing up a disk to an image will be faster than copying the exact data. Also, disk image make
the restoration much more easier.

c. Creating a compressed disk image.

 dd if=/dev/sda | gzip >/tmp/sdadisk.img.gz

d. Restoring hard disk image.

dd if=/tmp/sdadisk.img of=/dev/sda

e. Restoring compressed image.

gzip –dc /tmp/sdadisk.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sda

f. Clone one partition to another.

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4096 conv=noerror,sync

This will synchronize the partition /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdb1. You must verify that the size of
/dev/sdb1 should be larger than /dev/sda1

2. Backing up and restoring MBR.

Master Boot record is the boot sector which houses the GRUB boot loader. If MBR
gets corrupted, we will not be able to boot into Linux. MBR -512 byte data- is located at the first
sector of the hard disk. It consists of 446 byte bootstrap, 64 byte partition table and 2 bytes
signature.

a. Backing up MBR.

dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/mbr.img bs=512 count=1

The option “count” refers to the number of input blocks to be copied.

b. Backing up the boot data of MBR excluding the partition table.

dd if=/dev/sda of=/tmp/mbr.img bs=446 count=1

c. Restoring MBR from MBR image.

dd if=/tmp/mbr.img of=/dev/sda

d. Display master boot record.

dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bin bs=512 count=1

od -xa mbr.bin

3. Converting data formats.

a. Convert the data format of a file from ASCII to EBCDIC.

dd if=textfile.ascii of=textfile.ebcdic conv=ebcdic

b. Convert the data format of a file from EBCDIC to ASCII

dd if=textfile.ebcdic of=textfile.ascii conv=ascii

4. Converting case of a file.

a. Converting a file to uppercase.

dd if=file1 of=file2 conv=ucase

b. Converting a file to lowercase.

dd if=file1 of=file2 conv=lcase

5. Creating or modifying data files.

a. Create a fixed size, say 10MB file.

dd if=/dev/zero of=file1 bs=10485760 count=1

The block size is calculated as 10MB=10*1024*1024.

b. Modify the first 512 bytes of a file with null data.

dd if=/dev/zero of=file1 bs=512 count=1 conv=notrunc

The option ‘notrunc’ refers to do not truncate the file, only replace the first 512 bytes, if it exists.
Otherwise, you will get a 512 byte file.

Conclusion.

These are the some examples of ‘dd’ command usage. This ‘data duplicator’ command can be
used in a lot more ways in your daily administration tasks.

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Comments (4)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

1. Pawan says:
 August 26, 2014 at 5:25 pm

Thanks very nice explanation of DD command. I love making files for SWAP with this
command.

Reply

2. HyunWoo Jo says:
March 16, 2015 at 4:23 pm

Thank you for good example.

Reply

3. DANIEL NJORA KAGUONGO says:

July 16, 2016 at 1:28 am

I have gained a lot.

Reply

4. Roderick says:
December 23, 2016 at 12:08 pm

Sorry if I ask a dumb question, but will the below command

dd if=/tmp/mbr.img of=/dev/sda
not destroy the /dev/sda, leaving only the MBR?
You see, if I have, say, a file 1.txt with '123456789' in its contents and I run
dd if=/dev/zero of=1.txt bs=1 count=1
it will put 1 byte into this file, wiping out everything else.
To only replace the first byte, AFAIK, I have to use conv=notrunc parameter, i.e.
dd if=/tmp/mbr.img of=/dev/sda conv=notrunc
Then only the first byte is change and everything else stays intact.

Reply

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