IMHO, it was a mistake to make USB block storage use the same line of names also used for local hard disks. Sure, the block device drivers for USB mass storage internally hook into the SCSI subsystem to provide block level access, and that’s why the drives are called sd[something], but why should I as an end user have to care about that? A USB drive is very much not the same thing for me as a SCSI harddisk. A NVMe drive on the other hand, kinda sorta is, at least from a practical purpose point of view, yet NVMe drives get a completely different naming scheme.
That aside, suggest you use lsblk before dd.
At least sata is well on its way towards dying, so the problem will solve itself in some more years.
My machines all have nvme exclusively now, only some servers are left using sata. And I would say the type of user at risk of fucking up a dd command (which 95% of the time should be a cp command) doesn’t deal with servers. Those are also not machines you plug thumb drives into commonly.
In 5-10 years we will think of sda as the usb drive, and it’ll be a fun-fact that sda used to be the boot drive.
My motherboard has 3 nvme bays.
If I saw the need, there are cheap pcie to nvme cards, since (non-sata) nvme is just directing pcie lanes to the ssd anyway.
But like I said below, I don’t even have the need to get a single ssd at the currently maximum price-effective size of 4TB, no less two or three.
In my observation putting mass storage into your pc is dying in favor of either not needing that much storage, or putting it in a nas or other internet-accessible device.
Even my non-IT friends do things like put their hdd in a usb enclosure and attach it to their (internet accessible) router.
does that mean that you dont use hard drives at all? how many storage have you got?
I have a nas with 32TB. My main pc has 2TB and my laptop 512GB. I expected to need to upgrade especially the laptop at some point, but haven’t gotten anywhere near using up that local storage without even trying.
I don’t have anything huge I couldn’t put on the nas.
At this point I could easily go 4TB on the laptop and 8TB the desktop if I needed to.
Spinning rust is comparable in speed to networking anyway, so as long as noone invents a 20TB 2.5’’ hdd that fits my laptop for otg storage, there would be no reason something would benefit from an hdd in my systems over in my nas.
Edit:
Anything affordable in ssd storage has similar prices in M.2-nvme and 2.5’'-sata format. So unless you have old hardware, I see the remaining use for sata as hdd-only.
I still made the mistake, when I sleep deprived switched if and of somehow
My then girlfriend wasn’t exactly happy, that all here photos and music, which we just moved off old CDs, that couldn’t be read correctly anymore, and I spent quite some time to finally move them
Obviously the old CDs and the backup image were thrown out/deleted just a few days earlier, because I proudly had saved the bulk of it - and being poor students having loads of storage for multiple backups wasn’t in reach.
Backing them up again to fresh CDs was on the plan, but I quickly needed a live USB stick to restore my work laptop…
Since then I’m always anxious, when working with dd. Still years later I triple check and already think through my backup restoration plan
Which is a good thing in itself, but my heart rate spikes can’t be healthy
Yeah lsblk, lsscsi, fdsik -l , go have a coffee, come back later and hit enter on dd
