8. Duplicating Floppy Disks with the dd Command

It is not necessary to mount a floppy disk in order to duplicate it with the dd command.General users can perform the operation if they use a directory with write authorization.This approach copies the entire image of the floppy disk.The copy destination is specified with of and the file to copy with if.

To create a duplicate copy of a floppy disk,input the copy from disk and;


# dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/tmp/fdimage

Change the command line to the copy to disk.


# dd if=/tmp/fdimage of=/dev/fd0

In a must-do situation,you can use this feature to create a boot disk.And,if you rebuild the kernel with the necessary drivers,you can do a lot more.


# dd of=/dev/fd0 if=/boot/vmlinuz

The vmlinuz* in the above command line specifies the kernel image currently in use.Another command that creates boot disks in the same way is mkbootdisk.