I'm currently writing 1s to a file using the following:
tr '\0' '\377' < /dev/zero > /dev/sdb
But this is a really slow method when I want to fill a 500GB disk. Is there a quicker way?
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Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Owen Pauling
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Usually `dd` have used in the case – Costas Sep 16 '15 at 09:43
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Depending on why you're doing it, consider `shred`. – Mikel Sep 16 '15 at 09:56
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1Just implement /dev/one, it shouldn't be that hard. – jlliagre Sep 16 '15 at 10:01
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3This feels like an XY problem. What are you trying to accomplish? – Sobrique Sep 16 '15 at 10:24
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@Sobrique: I need the disk in a particular state for testing purposes. – Owen Pauling Sep 16 '15 at 10:26
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1How fast is it running? Is `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M` appreciably faster? (I know it's not the pattern you want, but that can be changed). – Mark Plotnick Sep 16 '15 at 14:39
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1See: http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/208957/38906 – cuonglm Sep 16 '15 at 15:39
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It may be faster to create a reasonably-sized file full of one bits, say 1MB, with something like tr '\0' '\377' </dev/zero | dd of=allones bs=1M. Then you could write this repeatedly, e.g. while true; do cat allones; done >/dev/sdb.
Tom Hunt
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