I am using dcfldd to wipe a drive and lear forensics. I don't really want to have to deal with the math of the blocks and sectors, and just want dd or dcfldd to write over every possible bit on the drive or device.

As an example I saw this example on a site, too write ones to a drive

dcfldd pattern="11111111" of=/dev/hda bs=4096 conv=sync,notrunc

Why do you need 8 one's(I assume to make a byte) and what does notrunc mean, as well as the sync option. Also with the bs= option, is bigger always better and faster?

I have read the man page but don't understand the keywords.

If your goal is to overwrite the drive, why not just use shred? Just curious.....

Id rather use more fundamental tools, to ensure the job is done properly.

DBAN is good, very efficient by means of
"no chance to recover files"

http://www.dban.org/about
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/48092

.....

DBan doesnt work on my Sata controller, it just dies one I go to wipe. I need EBAN which I wont pay for.