dd

• Used for system backups

• 5 types of backup

• System backup: entire image (acronis, veeam, commvault, etc )

• Application backup: for a specific app (3rd party software)
• Database backup: database (oracle dataguard, sql backup, etc)
• Filesystem backup: filesystem copy (tar, gzip, directoris, etc)

• Disk backup or disk cloning: Clones the disk (dd command)

• dd primary purpose is to convert and copy files!

• dd doesn't care about the size used! It copies everything (used and free memory)

dd if="src-file" of="dest-file"
dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/sdy # Copy disk to disk
dd if=/dev/sdx of=/data # Copy disk to directory

dd if=/dev/sdx1 of=/dev/sdy1 # Copy partition to partition
dd if=/dev/sdx1 of=/data/sdx1.img # Copy partition to file

dd if=/data/sdx1.img of=/dev/sdx1 # Restory backup from file

• Ctrl+T while dd is copying shows the progress

Copy ISO to flash drive

## List block devices
lsblk

## Unmount the partition
sudo umount /dev/sdx1

## Copy and convert files to flash drive
sudo dd \
  if=input.iso \
  of=/dev/sdx \
  bs=4M \
  conv=fdatasync \
  status=progress