A simple wrapper around ddrescue that reduces the error involved in burning images to SD cards.

flasher

#!/bin/bash
#
# Usage: ./flasher path/to/rpi.img
#
# A interactive wrapper around ddrescue that offers a menu to select which 
# removable media to write the given image to. This makes it easier and 
# safer to flash images to SD Cards then simply using dd.
#
set -uo pipefail
trap 's=$?; echo "$0: Error on line "$LINENO": $BASH_COMMAND"; exit $s' ERR
IFS=$'\n\t'

all_drives() {
    /usr/bin/ls -d1 /sys/block/* | grep -v "/sys/block/loop"
}

removable_drives() {
    for drive in $(all_drives); do
        if [[ "$(cat "$drive/removable")" == "1" ]]; then
            echo "$drive"
        fi
    done
}

device_label() {
    local vendor="$(cat "$1/device/vendor")"
    local model="$(cat "$1/device/model")"
    local size_bytes="$(expr "$(cat "$1/size")" "*" 512)"
    local size="$(numfmt --to=iec-i --suffix=B --padding=7 "${size_bytes}")"

    echo "$vendor $model $size"
}

dev_file() {
    echo "/dev/$(basename "$1")"
}

menu() {
    for drive in $(removable_drives); do
        dev_file "$drive"
        local size_bytes="$(expr "$(cat "$drive/size")" "*" 512)"
        local size="$(numfmt --to=iec-i --suffix=B --padding=7 "${size_bytes}")"
        device_label "$drive"
    done
}

clean_exit() {
    clear
    exit $@
}

image="${1?"missing image"}"
device="$(dialog --stdout --clear --menu "Select a drive" 0 0 0 $(menu))" || clean_exit 1
clear

sudo ddrescue --force "${image}" "${device}"