Linux Tip: How and when to use the dd command?

Learning by Examples explains the use of the dd command with a lot of useful examples

In this article, Sam Chessman explains the use of the dd command with a lot of useful examples. This article is not aimed at absolute beginners. Once you are familiar with the basics of Linux, you would be in a better position to use the dd command.The ‘ dd ‘ command is one of the original Unix utilities and should be in everyone’s tool box. It can strip headers, extract parts of binary files and write into the middle of floppy disks; it is used by the Linux kernel Makefiles to make boot images. It can be used to copy and convert magnetic tape formats, convert between ASCII and EBCDIC, swap bytes, and force to upper and lowercase.