Process of formatting prepping a blank hard drive for backup (Mac)
 

aplogies if I have asked this already, but needed some claification, I recently formatted a 2tb western digital wd20 hard drive to use as a backup to my main music hard drive, for formatting a blank hard drive I have used the procedure outlined in this article; http://macs.about.com/od/application...ilformat_4.htm

In a part of the article, one of the steps is said to write out 0's to the drive to prevent data from being written to bad sectors.

here is an exerpt; I highlighted in red the section I am talking about

Formatting a hard drive is conceptually the same as erasing it. The main difference is that you will select a hard drive, not a volume, from the list of devices. You will also select the type of drive format to use. If you use the formatting method that I recommend, the formatting process will take a little longer than the basic erase method described earlier.
Format a Hard Drive

Select a drive from the list of drives and volumes. Each drive in the list will display its capacity, manufacturer, and product name, such as 232.9 GB WDC WD2500JS-40NGB2.

Click the ‘Erase’ tab.

Enter a name for the drive. The default name is Untitled. The drive's name will eventually appear on the desktop, so it's a good idea to choose something that's descriptive, or at least more interesting than "Untitled."

Select a volume format to use. The Volume Format dropdown menu lists the available drive formats that the Mac supports. The format type that I recommend using is ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled).'

Click the ‘Security Options’ button. A Security Options sheet will display multiple secure erase options.

Select ‘Zero Out Data’ from the list of options. This option will perform a test on the hard drive as it writes zeros to the drive's platters. During the test, Disk Utility will map out any bad sections it finds on the drive's platters so they can't be used. This helps ensure that you won't be able to store any important data on a questionable section of the hard drive. This erase process can take a fair amount of time, depending on the drive's capacity.

Make your selection and click the ‘OK’ button. The Security Options sheet will disappear.

Click the ‘Erase’ button. Disk Utility will unmount the volume from the desktop, erase it, and then remount it on the desktop.


Do I need to write 0's to the blank hard drive? I just did a format of an external via usb, (it had firewire 400 as well, but I read this was not much faster) but it took a whole overnight & day to do of my 2tb hard drive.

I used the icydock http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=93
this enclosure was on sale so I got it.

I noticed after several hours while formatting writing zeros that the enclosure was fairly warm, & my mac fans were going. when I came into my room for awhile, I turned on a ceiling fan & it seemed to cool the enclosure.

It seemed like alot just to prep a hard drive to use, would firewire 400 be better for this?

It's a waste of time. All drives come from the factory with some bad sectors, but they were already quarantined at the factory. Zeroing out the disk when you format it will find and quarantine bad blocks, but it won't tell you that it found any bad blocks. So you're basically just wasting time re-doing what's already supposed to be done. And even if there were problems, you'd never know it.

There are better ways to test disk integrity, using Linux apps from a boot disk.

Just format it the quick and easy way, and use it.

Firewire 400 and USB2 are about the same. IEEE1394 is sustained, while USB varies (it's a burstable media).