Using Disk Utility to erase Hard Drive

Hi All
I just bought a new external hard drive and am using Disk Utility to erase and format it. I did not know for sure if erasing the hard drive was the right thing to do. Anyway I set up the Volume as follows from the mac help instructions:
1.format OS extended journaled
2.Install OS9 disk driver.
3.("Zero all data" and "8 Way Random Write Format"). So it has been running for about 3 hours now and is only 1/8 of the way writing 0's to disk.
My question is should I continue on and just let it finish up? At the rate it is going It might be done by sometime tomorrow.
Or can I stop the erasing process without hurting the hard drive.
Then start disk utility erasing the hard drive without this Zero all data.
Thanks much

Just to confirm your impression, S. Frigolett: yes, everything should be fine now.
Zeroing a drive is advisable if you have reason to believe there may be bad data storage blocks on it; zeroing identifies those blocks and prevents them from being used (because using them would result in lost or corrupt data). A simple erase doesn't do that, but on a new drive straight from the factory there is no reason to think it's necessary.
The 8 way random write option is for people who have extremely sensitive data to erase from a drive that may pass into other hands, and who want to be sure that no one short of the NSA will have any chance of recovering any of that data. A new, empty drive has nothing on it that even the NSA could recover, so there's no reason to erase it that thoroughly.

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Disk Utility To Erase Hard Drive

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I'm sure this has been asked before but here goes...
By accident I just used Disk Utility and chose to "Erase" my external hard drive. Whoops!
I think I hit "cancel" before it zeroed out the drive but when I mount the drive now I see an empty disk. But the whole operation was so quick - not more than a couple seconds from start to finish - it gives me hope that the data's still there.
I've disconnected the drive - so I'm sure not to write anything new to it.
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