"Even months later we still don't know if anybody has had success with dd content on one of those sticks"

In case the procedure damaged the stick it would be nice if it was your strawberry and not my $100 stick (I am not going to try
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thanks anyway Melodie
That's for an expensive usb pendrive ! Is it made out of gold with precious stones decorating it ?

dd would not damage your stick I think, but either erase it's whole content, or just give up on try. I believe I might have tried dd and failed, but I don't remember the details. dd does a bit-to-bit copy from source to destination, therefore erases anything that may have been previously to destination.
If you want to multiboot with pendrive, or have one that boots and the rest of the space for your data, then you don't want to use dd for this purpose, anyway.
/if your 100$ USB media is not covered of gold with diamonds and emeralds on it, tell me where not to buy one for this price ! (just joking !

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