Overwriting a 4096 byte sector harddisk drive with random data

Hi

I need to write random data to a partition before encrypting it. Suggested
way is to use urandom:

#dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda2

What is the use of operand "bs" in the following case? I see the above
command executed as follows sometime:

#dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda2 bs=1M

For the hard drive I got, should I use the following command:

#dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda2 bs=4096

From what I understand, the first command above will write data in 512 byte
blocks, the second one in 1MB blocks, and the third in 4096 byte blocks.
Right?
I am a bit confused about the usage of this operand in this case.

--
Kind regards,
Yudi
--
users mailing list
users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

Relevant Pages