[Novalug] need dd help

[Jon LaBadie]

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 10:17:04PM -0500, Jay Hart wrote:
> I think this command with totally wipe a drive:
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/devicename bs=1k
> 
> Yes/no. what exactly does the "bs=1k" do???

By default dd uses input and output buffers of 512 bytes.
These can be changed individually with ibs= and obs=.
Your option bs= changes both buffer sizes to 1024 bytes.

I find when making large transfers like this that a
larger buffer size greatly speeds up dd.  I'd suggest 4k.

jl
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Jon H. LaBadie                  novalugml at jgcomp.com
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