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How to Copy Hard Disk to Another in Linux Using the dd Command

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Cloning a hard disk in Linux with the dd command creates a block-by-block copy from one drive to another. This can duplicate partitions, boot records, filesystems, and unused space exactly as they exist on the source disk, making it useful for migrations, backups, recovery work, and replacing a failing drive.

The power of dd also makes it risky: choosing the wrong output disk can overwrite data instantly. Before running any copy command, you must clearly identify the source and destination devices, unmount filesystems where appropriate, and confirm the target disk is at least as large as the original.

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This guide walks through safely identifying disks, preparing them for cloning, running a reliable disk-to-disk dd command, watching progress while it runs, and checking the cloned drive afterward so you can avoid common mistakes and confirm the copy succeeded.

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What the dd Command Does When Copying Disks

The dd command copies raw data from one input to one output. When you use it to copy a hard disk to another disk, it reads blocks directly from the source device, such as /dev/sda, and writes those blocks directly to the destination device, such as /dev/sdb. This is different from copying files with cp or a file manager: dd does not care about filenames, directories, permissions, or free space. It copies the disk layout itself.

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A disk-to-disk clone made with dd can include the partition table, bootloader, partitions, filesystems, deleted-space remnants, and unused sectors, depending on what device path you choose. Copying from the whole disk device, for example if=/dev/sda, clones the entire drive structure. Copying from a partition, for example if=/dev/sda1, copies only that partition’s contents and filesystem data. For a full bootable drive clone, the source and destination should usually be whole-disk devices, not individual partitions.

How dd treats source and destination drives

The basic form of the command is dd if=SOURCE of=DESTINATION. The if value is the input file, and the of value is the output file. In Linux, disks are represented as device files under /dev, so a physical disk can be used as either input or output. This power is also what makes dd risky: if you reverse the source and destination, the command can overwrite your original disk with blank or unwanted data.

  • if=/dev/sdX sets the disk being read from.
  • of=/dev/sdY sets the disk being written to.
  • bs=64K or bs=4M sets a larger block size for better throughput on many systems.
  • conv=noerror,sync tells dd to continue after read errors and pad unreadable blocks so offsets remain aligned.
  • status=progress shows bytes copied while the operation runs.
  • oflag=direct can reduce cache effects by writing more directly to the target device.

Because dd works below the filesystem level, it can clone Linux, Windows, BSD, and other disk formats without needing to understand them. It can also duplicate damaged filesystems as-is, which is useful for recovery workflows but can carry existing corruption to the new disk. If the source disk is 1 TB and contains only 100 GB of files, a plain full-disk dd clone still reads and writes the whole 1 TB, including empty areas.

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The destination drive should be at least as large as the source drive when cloning a whole disk. If it is smaller, the copy may fail before reaching the end, and the resulting disk may not boot or mount correctly. If it is larger, the clone will usually work, but the extra space will remain unallocated until you expand a partition or create a new one. Before running any command, confirm the device names carefully with tools such as lsblk, blkid, or fdisk -l, and treat the destination as disposable because its existing contents will be replaced.

Identify the Source and Destination Drives

Before running dd, identify which disk is the source and which disk is the destination. This is the step where most destructive mistakes happen: dd will not ask whether you meant to overwrite a drive, and if you reverse the input and output devices, you can destroy the original disk. In a disk-to-disk clone, the source is the drive you want to copy from, and the destination is the drive that will be overwritten with the clone.

Start by listing all block devices with lsblk. This shows disk names, sizes, partitions, mount points, and often enough detail to distinguish the drives:

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,SERIAL,TYPE,MOUNTPOINTS

Look for whole-disk devices such as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/nvme0n1, or /dev/mmcblk0. Partitions are listed beneath them, such as /dev/sda1 or /dev/nvme0n1p1. For a full disk clone, use the whole disk device, not an individual partition. For example, clone from /dev/sda to /dev/sdb, not from /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdb1.

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Use multiple commands to confirm the drive names

Do not rely on a single clue such as drive order. Linux device names can change after rebooting, reconnecting USB disks, changing ports, or booting from a rescue environment. Confirm the source and destination using size, model, serial number, and partition layout:

  • lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,SERIAL,TYPE,MOUNTPOINTS shows a clear tree of disks and partitions.
  • sudo fdisk -l prints partition tables and disk sizes.
  • sudo parted -l shows partition table type, disk size, and partition layout.
  • ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ lists stable device links based on hardware identifiers.

Using /dev/disk/by-id/ paths can reduce ambiguity because they include the drive model and serial number. For example, a SATA SSD might appear as a long path under /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Samsung_SSD_..., while a USB adapter may appear under /dev/disk/by-id/usb-.... These names are especially useful when several drives have similar sizes.

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Check source and destination carefully

Write down the exact devices before continuing. The destination disk should be at least as large as the source disk if you are cloning the entire drive byte for byte. A slightly smaller destination, even by a few sectors, can cause the copy to fail near the end. If the destination is larger, the clone will work, but the extra space may remain unused until you expand partitions or filesystems later.

Item to confirm What to look for
Source disk The existing drive that contains the data, operating system, or partitions you want to copy.
Destination disk The target drive that can be completely overwritten.
Device path Use whole disk names such as /dev/sda or /dev/nvme0n1, not partition names.
Size The destination should be equal to or larger than the source for a full disk clone.
Mount points Mounted partitions help identify the active system disk and external drives.

A safe habit is to connect only the disks required for the clone: the source, the destination, and the boot media if you are using a live Linux environment. If you are cloning from a running system disk, booting from a live USB is usually safer because it keeps the source disk inactive and easier to identify. Once you are certain of both device paths, you can proceed to unmount partitions and prepare the disks for cloning.

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Unmount Drives and Prepare for Cloning

Before running dd, make sure the source disk is not being actively written to and the destination disk contains nothing you need. A disk-to-disk clone copies raw blocks, including partition tables, boot sectors, filesystems, deleted space, and unused areas. If Linux writes to either disk during the operation, the clone can become inconsistent; if you reverse the source and destination device names, the original disk can be overwritten immediately.

Start by reviewing the disks one more time with a command such as lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,TYPE,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINTS,MODEL,SERIAL. Confirm the source disk by its size, model, serial number, and existing partitions. Confirm the destination disk the same way, and make sure it is at least as large as the source. Even a destination that is only a few megabytes smaller can cause dd to stop before the final blocks are copied.

Unmount mounted partitions

If any partitions on the source or destination are mounted, unmount them before cloning. For example, if /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb2 are mounted, run:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1
sudo umount /dev/sdb2

Do the same for any mounted partitions on the destination disk, such as /dev/sdc1. If a partition refuses to unmount because it is busy, check which process is using it with sudo lsof +f -- /dev/sdb1 or sudo fuser -vm /dev/sdb1. Close file managers, terminal sessions, backup tools, media indexers, or applications using that mount point, then try unmounting again.

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Disable swap and avoid cloning a live root filesystem

If a partition on either disk is being used as swap, turn it off before cloning. You can list active swap devices with swapon --show, then disable the relevant one with a command such as sudo swapoff /dev/sdb3. This prevents memory pages from changing on disk while dd is reading or writing.

For the most reliable result, do not clone the disk that is currently running your Linux system while it is mounted as the active root filesystem. Boot from a live USB environment instead, such as an Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, or rescue image. From the live session, install no applications to the disks being cloned, avoid opening their filesystems in a file manager, and run the clone from a terminal. This keeps the source disk stable during the copy.

Final preparation checklist

  • Record the device names: write down the source, for example /dev/sdb, and the destination, for example /dev/sdc.
  • Use whole-disk devices: clone /dev/sdb to /dev/sdc, not /dev/sdb1 to /dev/sdc1, when you want a full disk copy.
  • Check mounted filesystems: run findmnt or lsblk and confirm there are no mount points under the disks you will use.
  • Confirm destination data can be erased: everything on the destination disk will be replaced by the clone.
  • Prefer stable connections: connect drives directly when possible, avoid loose USB adapters, and use reliable power for long copies.

After these checks, leave the disks idle and keep the terminal open for the cloning command. The next step is to run dd with the source assigned to if= and the destination assigned to of=, so this preparation step is where most mistakes should be caught.

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Copy a Hard Disk to Another Disk with dd

After you have positively identified the source disk and destination disk, run dd against the whole block devices, not individual mounted directories. The source is specified with if= and the destination with of=. In a typical disk-to-disk clone, this means copying from something like /dev/sda to /dev/sdb. The destination disk must be the same size as, or larger than, the source disk, because dd copies raw sectors, including partition tables, boot sectors, filesystems, free space, and deleted-space remnants.

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A common safe command for cloning one disk to another is:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress

Replace /dev/sdX with the source disk and /dev/sdY with the destination disk. For example, if /dev/sda is the old drive and /dev/sdb is the blank replacement drive, the command would be sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress. Check this mapping again before pressing Enter. Reversing the two paths will overwrite the original disk with the contents of the target disk.

Common dd options for disk-to-disk cloning

  • if=/dev/sdX: Sets the input file, which should be the source disk you want to copy.
  • of=/dev/sdY: Sets the output file, which should be the destination disk that will be overwritten.
  • bs=64K: Uses a larger block size than the default, often improving throughput for disk cloning.
  • conv=noerror,sync: Continues after read errors and pads unreadable blocks so the output stays aligned with the source.
  • status=progress: Prints the number of bytes copied while the operation is running.

For a straightforward clone of a healthy disk, bs=64K or bs=1M is usually appropriate. If the source disk may be failing, keep conv=noerror,sync in the command so bad sectors do not shift later data out of position on the cloned drive. If you are cloning a disk with known hardware problems, consider using a recovery-focused tool such as ddrescue instead, because it is designed to retry damaged areas more intelligently.

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You can add iflag=fullblock to make reads fill complete input blocks before writing them, which is useful when working with pipes or some block devices. A more conservative command is sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=64K iflag=fullblock conv=noerror,sync status=progress. When the copy finishes, run sync to flush cached writes to the destination disk before disconnecting it or rebooting: sudo sync.

Do not clone to a mounted destination partition, and do not use a partition path such as /dev/sdb1 when your goal is a full disk clone. Full-disk cloning should target the disk device, such as /dev/sdb, so the partition table and bootloader area are copied as well. If the destination disk previously contained data, assume it will be completely destroyed by the write operation.

Monitor dd Progress During the Copy

Cloning a full disk with dd can take minutes or hours depending on drive size, interface speed, block size, and disk health. During that time, an older dd command may appear to do nothing, even though it is actively copying data. Monitoring progress helps confirm that the clone is still running, estimate completion time, and spot slowdowns that may indicate USB adapter problems, bad sectors, or an overloaded system.

The simplest method on most modern Linux distributions is to add status=progress to the original command. This prints the number of bytes copied, elapsed time, and current transfer rate while dd is running. A typical disk-to-disk command with progress looks like this:

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sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress

Replace /dev/sdX with the source disk and /dev/sdY with the destination disk. Keep the same drive names you verified earlier with tools such as lsblk, blkid, or fdisk -l. Do not reverse them, because dd writes immediately and can overwrite the wrong disk without asking for confirmation. The progress output updates while the copy runs, then dd prints a final showing records read, records written, total bytes copied, total time, and average speed.

Check progress for an already running dd process

If you started dd without status=progress, you may not need to stop it. On Linux, you can send the running process a USR1 signal to make it print current I/O statistics to the terminal where it was launched. First, find the process ID:

pgrep -a dd

Then send the signal, replacing PID with the number shown:

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sudo kill -USR1 PID

This does not terminate the copy. It only asks dd to report its current progress. You can repeat the command whenever you want another update. If you started dd from a different terminal, the statistics usually appear in the original terminal session, not necessarily where you ran kill.

Use pv for a clearer progress display

For a more visual progress bar, you can pipe the copy through pv, the Pipe Viewer utility. This is useful when you know the source disk size and want percentage completion, throughput, elapsed time, and estimated time remaining. Install it if needed, then run a command similar to:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdX bs=64K conv=noerror,sync | pv -s 500G | sudo dd of=/dev/sdY bs=64K

In this example, 500G should match the approximate size of the source disk. You can get the exact byte size with lsblk -b -d -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL. Using pv does not make an unsafe command safe; it only improves visibility. Confirm the input and output disks again before pressing Enter, especially when several drives have similar capacities.

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  • Normal behavior: transfer speed may rise and fall as caches fill, slower disk regions are reached, or other I/O occurs.
  • Very low speed: check for failing disks, bad USB-SATA adapters, loose cables, or kernel error messages with dmesg.
  • No visible updates: confirm the process is still running with ps aux | grep '[d]d' or check disk activity with tools such as iotop.
  • After completion: run sync before disconnecting drives so buffered writes are flushed to the destination disk.
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Verify the Cloned Disk and Fix Common Issues

After dd finishes, do not assume the clone is correct until you have checked the result. The first step is to ask the kernel to reread the destination disk’s partition table, then inspect both drives side by side. Replace the device names with the ones you used during cloning, and be careful not to run any write operation against the original source disk.

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sudo partprobe /dev/sdY
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,LABEL,UUID,MOUNTPOINTS /dev/sdX /dev/sdY
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdX /dev/sdY

The destination disk should show the same partition layout as the source. If you cloned an entire disk, such as /dev/sdX to /dev/sdY, the partition table, boot records, and filesystem metadata are copied as well. This means the cloned partitions may have the same UUIDs as the original. That is expected, but it can cause confusion if both disks are connected at the same time because Linux may see duplicate filesystem identifiers.

Check the clone with read-only tests

Mount the cloned filesystems read-only first, especially if the source disk is still connected. Create temporary mount points and inspect directories, file counts, and application data. For example, if the first cloned partition is /dev/sdY1, mount it like this:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/clone-test
sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdY1 /mnt/clone-test
ls -la /mnt/clone-test
df -h /mnt/clone-test
sudo umount /mnt/clone-test

For a stronger comparison, you can compare partition checksums, but only when both partitions are the same size and neither is mounted read-write. This can take a long time on large disks. A safer and often more practical method is to use filesystem check tools on the cloned partitions, not on mounted filesystems.

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sudo fsck -f /dev/sdY1

Use the filesystem-specific tool when appropriate, such as e2fsck for ext filesystems or xfs_repair -n for a non-modifying XFS check. If the clone is intended to boot, shut down the system, disconnect the original disk, and boot from the cloned disk alone. This avoids duplicate UUID issues and confirms that the bootloader, partition table, and root filesystem work together.

Common issues after cloning

  • The destination disk is larger than the source: The extra space will not be used automatically. Expand the partition with a tool such as growpart, parted, or gparted, then grow the filesystem with resize2fs, xfs_growfs, or the correct tool for your filesystem.
  • The destination disk is smaller than the source: A raw dd disk clone usually fails or produces an incomplete copy. Shrink filesystems and partitions before cloning, or use a file-aware tool such as rsync, partclone, or clonezilla.
  • Duplicate UUIDs appear: If both disks will remain installed, assign new UUIDs to the cloned filesystems and update /etc/fstab on the clone. For ext filesystems, use sudo tune2fs -U random /dev/sdY1. For swap, use sudo mkswap -U random /dev/sdY2.
  • The cloned system does not boot: Check firmware mode first. A system installed in UEFI mode needs a valid EFI System Partition and boot entry, while a legacy BIOS system needs bootloader code in the expected place. Boot from a rescue USB, mount the cloned system, and reinstall GRUB to the destination disk if needed.
  • The kernel still shows the old partition table: Run sudo partprobe /dev/sdY or reboot before mounting the cloned partitions.

If verification reveals read errors from the source disk, avoid repeated cloning attempts with plain dd. Use ddrescue instead, because it is designed to retry bad areas intelligently and keep a recovery map. Once the clone passes filesystem checks, mounts correctly, and boots independently when required, you can treat the destination drive as a valid disk-level copy.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know which disk is the source and which is the destination before running dd?

Use commands such as lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,SERIAL,MOUNTPOINT, blkid, or sudo fdisk -l to compare disk sizes, models, serial numbers, and mounted partitions. The source disk is the one you want to copy from, and the destination disk is the one that will be completely overwritten. Double-check device names like /dev/sda and /dev/sdb immediately before running dd, because they can change after rebooting or reconnecting drives.

Will dd erase everything on the destination drive?

Yes. A disk-to-disk dd command writes raw data from the source drive directly onto the destination drive, replacing its partition table, filesystems, boot records, and existing files. If there is anything on the destination disk, back it up before starting the clone.

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What is a safe dd command for cloning one Linux disk to another?

A common command is sudo dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY bs=64K conv=noerror,sync status=progress, where /dev/sdX is the source disk and /dev/sdY is the destination disk. Use whole-disk devices, not partition names like /dev/sdX1, when you want a full disk clone. The status=progress option shows copy progress, while conv=noerror,sync helps continue past read errors and keeps blocks aligned.

Do the drives need to be unmounted before using dd?

Yes, the source and destination partitions should not be actively mounted while cloning. Mounted filesystems can change during the copy, which may leave the clone inconsistent, and mounted destination partitions may interfere with the overwrite. Booting from a live Linux USB is often the safest approach when cloning a system disk.

How can I check that the cloned disk worked correctly?

After dd finishes, run sync, then inspect the clone with lsblk, blkid, or sudo fdisk -l to confirm the partition layout matches the source. You can also mount the cloned partitions read-only and check that files are present. For boot drives, disconnect the original disk or change the boot order and test whether the cloned disk starts successfully.

Bottom Line

Cloning a hard disk with dd in Linux is powerful, direct, and effective when you carefully identify the source and destination drives first. Always double-check device names with tools like lsblk or fdisk -l, unmount mounted partitions when needed, and remember that the destination disk will be overwritten.

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For the safest result, use a command with options such as bs=64K, conv=noerror,sync, and status=progress, then verify the clone by comparing partition tables, checking filesystems, or boot-testing the target drive. If you are unsure which disk is which, stop before running dd—one careful check can prevent permanent data loss.

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