has anybody experience on how long it takes to zero a hard disk drive?

I'm speaking of a new lap top with 320GB HD installed on
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T5750 2.0 GHz, 2MB Cache, 667 MHz FSB

I'm using GPARTED and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

Thanks!

That'll take days.
Use a blocksize - a *big* one.

Are you doing this as a security measure pre-disposal/recycling? If so, I have heard about (although never used) a bootable CD program called "Darik's Boot 'N Nuke" (DBAN). I would imagine that users of this utility would be able to give you a pretty good idea about how long the process should take if you post in their forums.

Note that DBAN is likely to be somewhat more secure than copying /dev/zero to a device as it does multiple passes and writes different patterns of data to the drive. A single-pass zeroing will leave the device susceptible to forensic analysis which can recover the original disk contents. After the multiple passes of DBAN, this is a lot harder to do.

I'd use DBAN, it'll get rid of all that nasty evidence of hacking the pentagon you've got left over on there, overwrite it with like 32 passes of random data . There aint no comin' back for it though. And yes, with a drive that size, it will take a very long time to scramble then zero it all out. Not enough time to get it done before the FBI kicks in your door and unplugs it unfortionately.

Well, I was loosing hope, but the zeroing was completed for 4 and a half hours.

I had to remove an HPA partition that starts a demonic script for partitioning your hard disk - it is related to DELL MEdia Direct. If you delete the latter it might still nuke your lap top by repartitioning it - it has a stand alone button next to the power on button.

Now pressing it flashes the media direct picture and startd grub ...

After difficulty there is relief ...

Next time I'll do some random erase - but the point was the Host Protected Area where is the boot for the media direct...I won't give Media Direct any chance to reapear ... now I am a happy user of Fedora 9!

Thanks for your response, unfortunately I was already running the zero command when I posted the topic.

Cheers.