Question Why 'zero' a HDD other than security?

[videobruce]

Other then the probably most common reason to 'wipe' a drive of old data, are there any technical reasons to 'zero' a HDD?

 

[TheELF]

What, security not good enough for you?!
No there is no technical reason to zero out a drive.
There is something similar that hdd repair tools do that is to zero out and read back each sector so that the drive firmware recounts/reevaluates all the bad, weak, and good, sectors.

 

[tcsenter]

There is something similar that hdd repair tools do that is to zero out and read back each sector so that the drive firmware recounts/reevaluates all the bad, weak, and good, sectors.

I would add it is usually better to use the drive manufacturer's utilities for this task of media scanning to mark/remap bad clusters or blocks. Most all the HDD manufacturers have such a 'diagnostic' utility whether the feature within is called zero write, zero fill, disk wipe, etc,.

 

[videobruce]

IOW's 'good housekeeping'?
Does it matter if it is 'zeros' or 'ones'?

 

[CakeMonster]

If you're really paranoid, might as well use Bitlocker or similar from the get-go.

I would also assume that writing random values would be preferable to writing zeros, in case that some actual professionals get hold of your drives.

 

[solidsnake1298]

There is something similar that hdd repair tools do that is to zero out and read back each sector so that the drive firmware recounts/reevaluates all the bad, weak, and good, sectors.

I'm pretty sure Windows' check disk (chkdsk) utility can also find and mark bad sectors (if I recall this is only done with a "full" check and not a "quick" check).

 

[Oyeve]

I just drill a hole thru the platters. I ain't got no time for zeroing out.

 

[tcsenter]

To improve performance: Over time, a hard drive may become fragmented, which can slow down its performance. Zeroing the drive effectively defragments it, improving performance.

ChatGPT bot?

Zero-ing a drive most definitely does not 'defragment' data since it wipes all data on the disk. And there is no performance advantage to zero-writing the entire media, since there is nothing left on the drive to gauge performance. Wiping free space could have some modest benefits but not zero-ing the entire disk is a completely different solution used for a different problem.