Re: Block sizes for dd(1) to USB memory sticks (flash drives) for installers for FreeBSD

From: Craig Leres <leres_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2022 02:26:19 UTC 
On 10/1/22 16:45, Graham Perrin wrote:
> Evidently, the difference in speed was my imagination.
> 
> I found less than one second difference between these two commands:
> 
> time recoverdisk -v FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso /dev/da3
> 
> time gdd if=FreeBSD-13.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso of=/dev/da3 
> status=progress conv=sync bs=10M
> 
> recoverdisk(1) is a great hint. Thanks.

Years ago I had a failing HD that I wanted to image (maybe a TiVo disk?) 
dd wasn't cutting it so I looked around and found a tool someone wrote 
that would do large reads but reduce the buffer size when it encountered 
errors. Years later I discovered recoverdisk which is a nice 
implementation of this clever strategy.

My only issue is that I find it super difficult to remember what it's 
called!

		Craig