Safer way to use dd

Question

I need to write a .bin file directly to a USB (as boot sector opcodes), however, I don't like using the "disk destroyer" command from the terminal.

Is there a safer way to use dd?

Any utility can be unsafe if you aren't paying attention. I once used Norton GHOST to clone a disk, but accidentally wrote the empty disk onto the one with data. — Charles Burge, Oct 08 '16 at 01:23

karel · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-05T02:41:29.887

Because dd is a terminal program you can't easily see what you're doing, so if you're not paying attention it's easy to make a mistake that overwrites the wrong partition or drive. Even the smallest of typing errors can make dd into a disk destroyer. Using a graphical front-end to dd is a safer way to use dd.

Gdiskdump is a open source graphical user interface for dd. You can easily select the input and output stream, so you can clone or image your hard drive or partition. .tar.gz and .deb files are available at the gdiskdump GitHub website.

Installation in Debian-based systems

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/screenfreeze/gdiskdump.git
cd gdiskdump/deb/  && sudo dpkg -i *.deb # latest version is gdiskdump_0.8-1_all.deb

Thank you so much, and I'll try the other method as well. – Jim Oct 08 '16 at 01:49 — Jim, Oct 08 '16 at 01:49

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 08 '16 at 00:36

If your OS distribution supports it, consider using the /dev/disk/ symlinks instead of the /dev/sd* devices directly. For example, instead of:

# Was sda the right one? Or do I need to use sda1?
dd if=disk.img of=/dev/sda

You can use:

# Overwrite the partition with the label "OldStuff"
dd if=disk.img of=/dev/disk/by-partlabel/OldStuff

or

# Overwrite the first partition of my 3GB Seagate drive
dd if=disk.img of=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3000DM001-1ER166_W5009B5W-part1

or

# Write to the drive plugged into USB
dd if=disk.img of=/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:0a:00.0-usb-0:1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0

Safer way to use dd

2 Answers2