[DEMUG] Format before refreshing for backup?

[Steve Bohrer]

Not to speak for Jim, but, I think you certainly don't need to "zero 
out" the files. This is a good idea before giving a drive away, as it 
makes it harder to recover the previous data, but makes no sense if you 
are merely going to write more backup data.

As for trashing vs reformatting, if you are going to redo the whole 
drive, I don't know any downside to reformatting. If there are many 
nested directories with many files, a format may even be faster than 
trashing and emptying the trash.

A benefit of trashing is that you can be selective. But if you are 
ditching everything, why not format?

On the other hand, I worry a bit about the worst case bad-luck timing: 
what if your system dies hard while you are in the process of erasing 
your backup and starting over with a new backup? I like to keep at least 
a few of the files that it would pain me most to lose on DVD as well as 
backup hard disk.

Dick Atlee wrote:
> Thanks, Jim.  But I'm not sure waht you mean by "erase"?  Trash files? 
> Zero-out (that took me many hours on a 37G and this is 67G)?  Reformat?