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> I couldn't for the life of me tell you what dd stands for.

Traditionally, according to folklore? "Delete disk" or "destroy data". (Because it was commonly used to write raw disk blocks.)



I always assumed part of the "data destroyer" folklore was from people flipping if/of by accident and destroying their data :)


I thought the more common mistake with dd was picking the wrong disk to write to (especially when using /dev/sdc type naming instead of /dev/disk/by-id/whatever naming). Flipping source/dest and overwriting data is a problem I associate with the tar command.


Another, similar name it is sometimes jokingly referred to under is “destroyer of disks”.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081206105906/http://www.noah.o...


I always thought it was "disk dump"




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