cli guru needed

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 17:19 -0700, Les wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 14:38 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Sun, 2 Aug 2009, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > 
> > > On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 12:54 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> > > > Bazooka Joe wrote:
> > > > > Is there a way to combine these 2 commands to cut my time in half?
> > > > >
> > > > > VBoxManage internalcommands  converttoraw file.vdi file.raw
> > > > > then I have to run
> > > > > dd if=file.raw of=/dev/sdb
> > > > >
> > > > > -thx
> > > > >
> > > > You can can command on the same command in several ways. It depends
> > > > on what you put between the command.
> > > >
> > > > ; - always run the next command.
> > > > && - run the second command only if the first command is successful.
> > > > || - run the second command if the first one fails.
> > >
> > > How is this going to reduce his total time? The commands are still
> > > running sequentially.
> > 
> >   i'd bump up the blocksize of that dd command.  IIRC, the default
> > blocksize for dd is 512 bytes -- painfully small and resulting in lots
> > and lots of little writes.  crank up the blocksize significantly and
> > that second command should speed up noticeably.
> > 
> > rday
> if the vbox command can follow fully qualified paths, you should be able
> to simply say converttoraw file.vdi /pathtosda/file.raw
> 
> However, going between disks may be faster or slower, depending on the
> way the command buffers the data, and/or handles disk I/O.  Personally I
> think some fundamental experimentation is in order.  There is a final
> issue in that some video files are protected in such a way that copying
> them is prohibited.  I don't know or care about the details as I never
> do anything with video.  However be aware that some driver software
> includes checks for pirating video and audio.  If your driver is setup
> to prohibit copying according to the DMCA, it will not work as expected.

AFAIK the OP is trying to convert a VB virtual disk to a raw format.
Perhaps you misread vdi for dvi. I'm not sure it's even possible to do
what he's asking, but it has nothing to do with video.

poc