advice write zeroes drive

Take it with a grain of salt, but I wrote zeroes to my 40GB laptop hard drive before installing Vista 32 bit, and I've had only minor (IMO) issues so far. I've got a performance index number, or whatever it's called, of 2 - so it's pretty much just slower than optimal hardware issues.
I know that Maxtor and Seagate have HD utilities you can download as .iso images.
Good luck. Running Vista is exciting once you get it!!!

I agree whole-heartly. I do a low-level format on my sys drive every six months or so, to start from fresh. It also removes any MBR virus's that are unknown. Low-level format are greatly under appreciated, imho.
"MyDisplayNameisG" wrote:

Take it with a grain of salt, but I wrote zeroes to my 40GB laptop hard drive before installing Vista 32 bit, and I've had only minor (IMO) issues so far. I've got a performance index number, or whatever it's called, of 2 - so it's pretty much just slower than optimal hardware issues.
I know that Maxtor and Seagate have HD utilities you can download as .iso images.
Good luck. Running Vista is exciting once you get it!!!

Just to save some newer users problems looking for a way to low level format their HD (i've answered countless questions on various forums/newsgroups from users wanting to zero-fill their drive and thought they needed a low level format) I thought it would be a good idea to point out that zero-filling a drive and low level formatting are not the same.
Very few if any modern hard drives can/should be low level formatted by an end user while zero filling can be used for various diagnostic and maintenance reasons.
A quote stolen from www.pcguide.com since it explains it better than what I had typed up originally .
"Low-level formatting is the process of outlining the positions of the tracks and sectors on the hard disk, and writing the control structures that define where the tracks and sectors are. This is often called a "true" formatting operation, because it really creates the physical format that defines where the data is stored on the disk."
"M@dhat3rr" wrote in message

I agree whole-heartly. I do a low-level format on my sys drive every six months or so, to start from fresh. It also removes any MBR virus's that are unknown. Low-level format are greatly under appreciated, imho.
"MyDisplayNameisG" wrote:
Take it with a grain of salt, but I wrote zeroes to my 40GB laptop hard drive before installing Vista 32 bit, and I've had only minor (IMO) issues so far. I've got a performance index number, or whatever it's called, of 2 - so it's pretty much just slower than optimal hardware issues.
I know that Maxtor and Seagate have HD utilities you can download as .iso images.
Good luck. Running Vista is exciting once you get it!!!