HDDd

HDDd is a command‑line utility for managing hard disk drives on Linux systems. First released in early 2004 by the open‑source project led by developer John Doe, it provides a lightweight alternative to graphical disk managers such as GParted. The tool supports a range of storage interfaces, including SATA, NVMe, and SCSI, and can operate on both individual disks and BIOS or UEFI discrete partitions.

Typical commands include HDDd --list to display all detected block devices, HDDd --format to create a new partition table, and HDDd --image to create or restore raw disk images in sector‑by‑sector format. The program also exposes SMART status monitoring via a simple –smart flag, enabling users to check drive health from the terminal. In addition, HDDd accepts options that affect LVM‑based logical volumes and can work with RAID arrays configured through mdadm.

The code base is distributed under the GPL‑v3 license and is hosted on the official project repository. Because of its minimal dependencies, HDDd runs on a broad spectrum of distributions ranging from Debian to Arch Linux. In forensic and penetration‑testing contexts, it is sometimes used for creating bit‑exact copies of drives prior to analysis. Although the utility is not as feature‑rich as some GUI counterparts, its straightforward syntax and low system footprint make it a favorite among power users who prefer precise, scriptable disk management tools.