`pv` (pipeviewer) is usually very useful for tracking progress.<p>dd if=&#x2F;dev&#x2F;zero count=10 bs=1M | pv &gt; file.bin<p>The other way to see progress on `dd` is to issue a signal 3 (USR1, iirc) to the dd process.  kill -3 &lt;dd pid&gt;