Tom -- why need to zero out new drive on format?

Hi Tom,
Page 5, FCE workshop book, you recommend zeroing out a new drive. Why?
Is it sufficient just to reformat to Mac formats? I thought zeroing out was just necessary if you wanted to erase previously held data (to prevent recovery)?
Or is there a performance benefit to do so?
Thanks.

Tom may have his own reason. Here is mine -
Zeroing out a new drive is plain old 'good practice.' It exercises the entire drive mechanism over an extended period of time by writing zeros to every location on every platter in the unit. This way your disk directory as well as all data locations are assured of being 'empty'. Doing this, especially to a new drive, will add to your confidence that your new drive is working properly.
If you just erase the disk, only the directory is emptied. This is like removing the table of contents page from a book, but the rest of the book is still there !
There is folklore that zeroing out the drive inspects the platter surface and identifies and sets aside unusable sectors. They are not the same processes. Modern hard drive technology and manufacture have progressed far beyond the level they were at in the 80's when low level formatting utilties that performed these surface scans were common. Today most drives can only be low-level formatted at the factory. For what it's worth, I have not found any confirmation that zeroing out via OSX Disk Utility performs surface scans; but there are third-party utilites like TechTool that can.

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