Ok, you said the man pages are not detailed, so I will explain what they mean with easy to understand metaphors about a moving guy (it goes by the name of dd
):
bs=BYTES
read and write up to BYTES bytes at a time
dd
picks up something (boxes, vases, beds, rice, etc.), move where it needs to be and drop it off. Until he doesn't drop the load, he doesn't pick anything else. Now, when you need to tell him exactly how many objects he should pick per travel, this is what bs
do. You set the amount of data he will read and write. This is almost mandatory in all useful and common commands.
count=N
copy only N input blocks
This determinate the total amount of boxes he will move. Boxes in this context are the blocks on the disk. You tell him to move 5 boxes, he only move 5 boxes even if there is more than 5 boxes (if there are less than 5 boxes, he will take a vase he found besides the boxes to add it up). If you tell dd
to count
only 5, and write it somewhere, he would copy the first 5 blocks he sees and write them where you want.
seek=N skip N obs-sized blocks at start of output
The guy normally finds the first available place to drop the load, this is normally at the start (of the disk), and continue filling up until the end. Well, with this you tell dd
to start further up, say instead of the hall, start in one of the rooms further inside. It just "skip" the starting blocks.
Now, depending what you are doing, you will need different combinations based on source and destination, along with the format they will be read and written. I recommend you to search for them separated.