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dd is a command line tool in Unix and Unix-like distributions. You can use dd to modify disk media easily, but one need to be careful here... The name is an illusion to the DD statement found in IBM's Job Control Language - but the software has gained the reputation of being the "Data Destroyer" when used haphazardly.
SpecsUpdate
LicenseGNU GPLv3+
Supported platformsmacOS, Linux, *BSD, Unix
Pros
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Cons
Con Doesn't support (most) optical media formats
dd is intended to work on tape and disk storage systems. Due to the ways CDs and DVDs work, with the probable exception of DVD-RAM discs, dd will not work as intended (and may not warn you about it...) If you wish to use a CLI tool to burn an iso to a disc, see growisofs instead.
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Recommendations
dd
4 years ago
dd has saved my bacon numerous times before, but it can also be as bad as running rm -Rf /. With the wrong keystroke, you can end up nuking the wrong drive. That NVMe SSD with your /home partition? Congrats, that's now an Ubuntu installation disk. Though, this can be useful when intentionally bricking...
Con
Highly VolitileCon
No official graphical user interfacePro
Available to the whole Unix family tree.Con
Doesn't support (most) optical media formats