Here is a possible advantage in zeroing a HD. It is not relevant to the subject question but might be a benefit to anyone.
When I buy a used HD, I check it with SMART Utility after formating. One such drive recently bought was failing according to SMART Utility. I zeroed out the drive and voila: SMART Utility no longer showed that HD to be railing. SMART Utility allows various options and will flag a drive that shows various kinds of errors thereafter you start with a clean slate. After the fresh start that zeroing the HD provided whereafter SMART Utility showed the HD as 'passing,' I think it was a benefit to zero out the disk before using CCC to copy software and data from another HD and thus provide a useful functional backup HD. Mel --- On Fri, 8/21/09, McGrude <[email protected]> wrote: From: McGrude <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Zero's, zero's, zero's... To: [email protected] Date: Friday, August 21, 2009, 8:28 PM On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Jeffrey Engle<[email protected]> wrote: > > Interesting question just came to me, when zeroing a hard drive, does > it take longer to zero the drive if the drive is full of data? If the > hard drive has let's say 10% percent of data on it, will it zero > faster? Jeff Unlikely that it will take longer or shorter depending on how full the disk is if the program used to zero the drive is thorough. If done correctly it will wipe the drive at a low level filling every block with zeros. It is best if it does a patterned sweep seven or more times. It wipes all the space, not just the used space. Consider a file you have deleted -- it isn't "used" space, but it should be wiped. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
