Gentoo - dcfldd

dcfldd

A fancier version of the basic "dd" command. The big advantage that I wanted was:

- Status information (useful when wiping large hard drives)

Here's my wipe command.

# dcfldd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda conv=notrunc bs=128k

If you're in more of a hurry, try:

# dcfldd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda conv=notrunc bs=128k

Some slower CPUs can't generate PRNG numbers (/dev/urandom) fast enough to keep up with the disk wipe process. If you're using "atop" you'll notice that the system is spending 100% of the time in the "sys" (and dcfldd is using up 100% CPU). In addition, the hard drive lights will not be constantly lit. Plus the "DSK" line for the drive being wiped will not be busy 100% of the time in "atop".