If your image is compressed as a .gz file rather than a .zip , you can use zcat or gunzip in a similar fashion.
To write a .zip image directly to a drive (such as an SD card or USB) without unzipping it to your hard drive first, you can pipe the output of the unzip command into dd .
The dd command is a powerful low-level utility used for bit-by-bit copying of files or entire drives. While dd natively handles raw image files (like .img or .iso ), it cannot directly process compressed archives like .zip without a helper command to extract the data on the fly. 1. Writing a Zipped Image to a Disk dd.zip
zcat image.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress 3. Creating a Compressed Image Creating a Forensic Image with dd
unzip -p path/to/image.zip | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress If your image is compressed as a
: The destination drive (e.g., /dev/sdb ). Caution: Using the wrong drive name will irreversibly destroy data.
The following write-up explains how to use the dd command to handle .zip or compressed disk images, specifically focusing on writing them directly to a drive. Direct Write-up: Working with dd and Compressed Images While dd natively handles raw image files (like
: Extracts the file to standard output (stdout) instead of creating a file on disk.