Thanks everyone for the responses.
Actually my doubt is if I am doing 2 swipes over the disk with a pattern and its compliment, using either dd/dcfldd for the purpose in a script, then the first swipe should have actually ended up physically on the sectors on disk before the second swipe.
With the script I have pasted in my first post, is the sync in between 2 swipes sufficient to ensure that?
Can anyone help me with some pointers on the impact of OS/disk caches on the way to disk sectors?