"Random Format" Question

[Dr. Cheesesteak]

I was formatting a drive as I'm selling off my old mac, and for some reason decided that not only should I zero out the drive but also select the 8 way random formatting option. I assumed that in starting it around 7 last night it would be close to done by sometime this afternoon, but when I checked it before leaving for work this morning it had barely even started.

The problem is that someone was supposed to pick this up from me tonight.

I have no option to cancel but do have the option to quit Disk Utility - which gives me a warning that doing so may leave the disk unusable.

Since I'm planning to reformat and re-install anyway, is there any harm in just quitting disk utility and starting over with only zeroing out the drive? Or am I really at risk to cause damage to the drive?

 

[gekko513]

My guess it that it would be OK to quit Disk Utility. I base my guess on the way I understand how the OS works. The Disk Utility uses kernel system calls to do the I/O operations. Even if Disk Utility quits the kernel should still be able to end the I/O calls gracefully.

The disk may not be usable directly, but a simple reformat should work.

The only situation that theoretically should be able cause a hardware failure is a kernel panic or a sudden power cut.