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a while ago I have been experimenting with that number. From what I have observed, from 512 (Bytes) onwards there was no noticeable change in performance. But this might depend on the architecture. You can try to find that lower boundary for your system. 512 is a good starting point.
Some stats for my system:
Code:
copying from /dev/urandom:
bs average speed
64 4.3 MB/s
128 4.9 MB/s
512 5.6 MB/s
4096 5.8 MB/s
copying from /dev/zero:
bs average speed
64 29.1 MB/s
128 40.8 MB/s
512 37.0 MB/s
4096 37.4 MB/s
The commands ran for approx. 30 seconds. As a rule of thumb, you might want to choose a bigger number if you have more data to copy. E. g. abort the command with bs set to 128 after 2 seconds and you will get a speed somewhere near 60 MB/s. This drops drastically if you let the command run for a minute. Maybe you can post some of your stats when you run the command.
Hope this helps.
[EDIT]:
Since we are talking about erasing HDD of several GB I recommend using a value of at least 4096. I choose 1M to be on the safe side.
goddamn...didnt know commandline is THAT resource sensitive...
I hope they are not. That *** spam bot has posted over 100 posts in a day. Can we somehow automate postings here at LQ?
AFAIK there's no way to automate posting in LQ, but of course there are various ways to do so from the outside using bot like techniques, scripting and such, but itt's against the LQ Rules to explain further
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