[ale] How do I fill a new hard drive with random data to burn it in?

[philip at turmel.org (Phil Turmel)]

On 12/30/2012 10:48 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> Hi Phil,
> 
> Thanks for the note.  I was trying something very similar, except for the bs=1M.  It appeared to be working ok, but was very slow.  I haven't had a chance to try shred.  I think I've found a better tactic below.

The "bs=1M" is there for speed.  Without it, dd reads/writes individual
256 byte sectors.  With such short requests, the OS can't max out the link.

For just a random wipe, dd or shred are simplest.  You want verification
of successful writes, so I concur with your choice of badblocks.

Phil