The article is about randomizing a drive before using it for full disk encryption. That does in fact require a random pattern. The idea is to hide the structure

The article is about randomizing a drive before using it for full disk encryption. That does in fact require a random pattern. The idea is to hide the structure of the data. >...but otherwise there is no reason for anyone to do anything but zero out a drive and that includes almost every single company. Overwriting doesn't work with SSDs. They leave copies of data laying around on the disk if you do that. That is even if you zero the whole disk as they have extra space in the form of overprovisioning. >Most drives these days come with a secure wipe and that is the fastest way to clear them. Tests have shown that a significant proportion of SSDs do this badly.