On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, Martin wrote:
Hello Martin,
> Meanwhile, I tried:
> dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hdg bs=1M
`/dev/random' produces very good quality random numbers--and consequently
there aren't many of these. What will normally happen is that a stream of
random numbers will be stored up over many hours and these will be emptied
very quickly if you try and copy a whole megabyte of them. It's designed
for fetching the odd 4-bytes or so; not several GB's worth.
`/dev/urandom' produces ``good enough'' random numbers, in quantity--this
is probably the source that you want for overwriting a disk with.
Out-of-interest, what's wrong with using `/dev/zero', which produces a very
high quality stream of bits, generally uncontaminated by "ones"?
-Paul
-- War is inconsistent with Truth. Nottingham, GB_______________________________________________ Nottingham mailing list Nottingham@mailman.lug.org.uk http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/nottingham