Home Forums Hardware Mac Desktops & Notebooks Is this a good way to delete hard drive contents?

I was in a hurry to delete the only volume on a hard drive so I could restore Time Machine to that single volume. Disk Utility offers Don't Erase Data as its quickest deletion method. Instead, I reformatted the drive by changing the number of partitions from one to three partitions. I then reformatted a second time back to one partition and named that volume. I'm about to restore TM to that volume.

Is there anything wrong with deleting an entire drive this way? It is really quick compared to the alternatives.

Repartitioning is a quick way to format a drive. It's not necessary to change the number of partitions though. You can go to the partition popup and it will have "current" as the top entry. It will still have all numeric options below it, including the current number. If you have one, and select to make one, it will make just one, empty.

Usual warnings go with using disk utility to format things

Thanks for the tip and reassurance. What're the problems with using Disk Utility to format things?

Formatting seems to be relatively trouble-free. There are only two issues I can think of offhand.

One, you have to pay attention to partition scheme. (MBR/APS/GPT) Sometimes it will change it when you don't want it to, and sometimes it won't change it when you need it to.

For example, if you get a hard drive formatted MBR/FAT32, and erase it to change FAT32 to HFS+ for your g4, you won't be able to boot from it because it's MBR/HFS+ not APS/HFS+. You have to be sure to repartition it instead, and check in Options to make sure it's set to APS.

The other issue is more, arcane, older versions of disk utility have problems partitioning when you get a lot of partitions. Also, bootability on older systems (like g4 or classic) can be broken by things like resizing with newer disk utility. Also problems with the boot selector can come up. The 12 partition service drive I have has some very specific requirements to work properly, including requirement to repartition with 10.4's disk utility.

There are ALSO issues with older systems booting off partitions beyond the 8th. It's a tangled web of undocumented gotchas.

Wow. You have an encyclopedic mastery of the subtle problems. It's obvious that you're a professional in the field. I do watch to see that all of the correct parameters are shown before partitioning, but I have everything running on 10.6.2 with an Intel Mac. Thanks a lot for the review. It is both interesting and helpful. Best regards.

You have an encyclopedic mastery of the subtle problems.

I'm rarely satisfied with solutions, I prefer to find out what's the cause of the problem. Sometimes it leads to a better solution, and sometimes it helps later with a related issue that would otherwise I would have overlooked the connection on had I not tracked down the previous problem to its root cause.

And it never hurts to have a nice mental toolbox of tricks. It's amazing how a nice set of "been there done that" can work in your favor.