Using dd

How do I... Using dd

Eventually you may want to create an iso image from some source or medium. In Linux, this is extremely easy using the dd command which is part of the sys-apps/coreutils package.

The following examples assume your system mounts a cd as /dev/cd and a dvd as /dev/dvd. To create an iso image named cd.iso in the working directory from a cd currently mounted from your cd-rom drive,

$ sudo dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cd.iso

The syntax is fairly simple. The only variables are if, for input folder, and of, for output file. To do the same for a dvd,

$ sudo dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso