Your first step erased your directory, but it left your data intact ...
I left out the in-between step whereby I initialized the entire drive thereby destroying all the data files. The zero overwrite was just added 'protection'.
How did you do that in-between step?
Nothing tricky. Checking through the possible subroutines for Disk (or Drive) Setup (on the Mac OS 9 Install CD) I found the option to initialize the entire drive; so I choose it and actually ran it twice.
