Bmaptool is a project created by Intel for creating and copying data using block maps. It's meant to be a simpler, faster, and more reliable tool than `dd`.
From their [GitHub page](https://github.com/intel/bmap-tools):
> - Faster. Depending on various factors, like write speed, image size, how full is the image, and so on, `bmaptool` was 5-7 times faster than `dd` in the Tizen IVI project.
> - Integrity. `bmaptool` verifies data integrity while flashing, which means that possible data corruptions will be noticed immediately.
> - Usability. `bmaptool` can read images directly from the remote server, so users do not have to download images and save them locally.
> - Protects user's data. Unlike `dd`, if you make a mistake and specify a wrong block device name, `bmaptool` will less likely destroy your data because it has protection mechanisms which, for example, prevent `bmaptool` from writing to a mounted block device.
It comes with two commands **create** and **copy**. Create generates the block maps which isn't required to use the application. However, having a bmap will speed up the copying process. The syntax of the copy command is the following
```bash
sudo bmaptool copy SRC DST
```
Let's say that I want to flash the latest Ubuntu ISO to a USB stick located at `/dev/sdX`. As the third bullet point claims, I can easily use the URL as SRC and since we don't have a bmap, we'll have to specify that with the flag `--nobmap`.
