Using dd to write an .iso to a USB drive

dd is one of those commands for which I have to look up proper usage every usage because I use it regularly but not often. As such, this is a public note-to-self, which may or may not be useful to the reader.

Prerequisites

The dd binary is, to my knowledge, included on macOS and all major Linux distributions.

Writing the file

dd if=<path-to-iso> of=<path-to-target-disk> status=progress

• The if option tells dd to read from the provided path instead of stdin.
• The of option tells dd to write to the provided path instead of stdout.
• The status option tells dd to show periodic transfer statistics.

The status option is primarily included because the program can otherwise seem unresponsive upon writing large .iso files, as the transfer to disk can take several minutes to complete.

Find the path to the target disk.

Chances are any system that ships with dd also ships with df. You can use the latter to identify the path to the target disk.

df --block-size=GB

The block-size ⁣option tells df to show relevant size measures in units of gigabytes so the listed disks are easier to tell apart.