Limitations
Seagate documentation warns, "Certain disc utilities, such as DD, which depend on low-level disc access may not support 48-bit LBAs until they are updated." Using ATA harddrives over 128 GiB requires 48-bit LBA. However, in Linux, dd uses the kernel to read or write to raw device files. Support for 48-bit LBA has been present since version 2.4.23 of the kernel, released in 2003.
It is jokingly said that dd stands for "disk destroyer", "data destroyer", "death and destruction", "damn dangerous", or "delete data", since when used for low-level operations on hard disks, a small mistake, such as reversing the if and of (input file and output file) parameters, could result in the loss of some or all data on a disk.
Read more about this topic: Dd (Unix)
Famous quotes containing the word limitations:
“To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“That all may be so, but when I begin to exercise that power I am not conscious of the power, but only of the limitations imposed on me.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)