Talk:How to wipe a hard drive clean in Linux

Pointless Blog Entry
The linked blog entry it total BS. There is no need to fill hard drives with data from /dev/{u,}random. Filling it with zeros is just as secure nowadays and a whole edge faster. —This unsigned comment was added by 178.201.41.59 (talk • contribs). Please remember to sign your posts on a talk page using ~.

What is 'bs=?'
No mention of what 'bs=' is for. I have zero desire to wipe a drive without knowing the details. How many searches do I need to do to enter one command? 68.114.54.6 22:13, February 24, 2014 (UTC)

"bs" stands for block-size
The "bs=" field/property (switch) stands for "Block Size." The block size specifies what size chunks (clumps) of data dd works with. (? To be more precise, is that the source (reading size) and/or destination (write size)?). Most storage devices are divided into half-Mebibyte (512 byte) block/sector sizes. Generally, running dd with a larger block size value helps it complete more quickly.

Another way of looking at this is to think of the block size (value given to an invocation of dd) as being in relation to the sector size on the storage device (disc). Fleetwoodta (talk) 22:06, February 25, 2014 (UTC)