Linux dd Command Show Progress Copy Bar With Status

How do you monitor the progress of dd?

Here is another example. First, find out your USB device name using the grep command and hwinfo command:
$ grep -Ff <(hwinfo --disk --short) <(hwinfo --usb --short)
Output:

disk:
  /dev/sdc             SanDisk Ultra

You can also try the df command or mount command to identify mounted USB pen and hard drives under Linux. For example:
$ df -hT
$ mount
Next, unmount the device under Linux:
$ sudo umount /dev/sdc
Finally, write an iso image to USB device named /dev/sdc and monitor the progress of dd:
$ sudo dd if=openSUSE-Leap-15.1-DVD-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=4M status=progress
Sample outputs:

2684354560 bytes (2.7 GB, 2.5 GiB) copied, 1 s, 2.7 GB/s    
967+1 records in
967+1 records out
4056940544 bytes (4.1 GB, 3.8 GiB) copied, 361.614 s, 11.2 MB/s

dd status=LEVEL options

Apart from the status=progress option, you can pass the following two options to fine tune the dd command outputs:

1. status=noxfer : Suppresses the final transfer statistic. It will hide the transfer statistics as the last line of status output.
2. status=none : Do not print the status output except for the error messages.

Use pv command monitor the progress of dd command and see status

Another option is to use pv command which allows you to see the progress of data through a pipeline. You need to install pv command as described here. Once installed, type the following commands to see the status bar. Please note that if standard input is not a file and no size was given with the -s option, the progress bar cannot indicate how close to completion the transfer is, so it will just move left and right to indicate that data is moving. It will also show average MB/s rate. Copy /dev/sda to to /dev/sdb:
# pv -tpreb /dev/sda | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=64M
OR
# pv -tpreb /dev/sda | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror

You can create a progress bar and display using the dialog command as follows:
$ (pv -n /dev/sda | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=128M conv=notrunc,noerror) 2>&1 \
| dialog --gauge "Running dd command (cloning), please wait..." 10 70 0

Fig.02: Show the Status of dd Command in progress using pv and dialog command

Examples: Use gnu dd command from coreutils version 8.24 or above only

Here is another example from my Apple Mac OS X/MacOS:
$ sudo gdd if=ZeroShell-3.6.0-USB.img of=/dev/disk5 bs=1024k status=progress

Fig.03: GNU dd displaying progress

How do you monitor the progress of dd on Linux?

If you are using an older version of dd or cannot install the pv command, try the following simple one-liner bash shell while loop/command:

## 1. first start dd as usual ##
sudo dd if=/dev/sdc of=/tmp/demo.img bs=4M
 
## 2. Open another terminal or tab ##
## 3. find pid of dd command ##
pidof dd              ### <--- say pid is 21145
ps aux | grep -w dd
 
## 4. Run bash/sh while loop as follows ##
while sudo kill -USR1 21145 ; do sleep 10 ; done
 
## 5. Switch back to terminal where dd was started ##

Conclusion

The dd command is wonderful, and there are various ways to display a progress indicator with dd. You learned how to monitor the progress of dd using the inbuilt status=progress option to the dd command. Another option is to use the pv tool. Finally, you learned that how to show dd progress in Linux without using pv or status= progress option. See GNU dd man page documentation for more info using the man command on your local workstation:
$ man dd
$ man pv