What is a custom overwrite?

Why would I want to do a custom overwrite?

How do I perform a custom overwrite?

1. Adding your custom pattern to the usrclean.txt file
   
   The usrclean.txt file is where you specify your patterns. This file needs to be located wherever you have chosen to save your log files. You can edit this file with Notepad. To run Notepad, select Start | Run, then enter "notepad" in the edit box, and then press 'Ok'. Browse to your WipeDrive diskette and open the usrclean.txt file. If it is not there, you can create one.
   
   Once you have the file open for editing, you can specify your pattern. Each line in the file represents a single operation. The following are the possible operations:
   
   overwrite [ch]
   overwrite and verify [ch]
   overwrite random
   overwrite and verify random
   
   In place of [ch], you must specify a number from 0 to 255 which represents the byte (character) to be used in overwriting the disk for that operation (see our ASCII table for a list of valid ASCII characters). Specifying "random" as the character will cause random data to be written. Using "overwrite and verify" will cause WipeDrive to verify that the data was written correctly to disk after an overwrite.
   
   As an example, a level 2 cleaning (DoD standard) could be written in usrclean.txt as follows:
   
   overwrite 0
   overwrite 255
   overwrite and verify random
   
   The first line will overwrite the entire drive once with the character 0.
   The second line will overwrite the entire drive with the character 255.
   And the last line will overwrite the entire drive with random characters and also verify that the operation completed successfully.
   
   
2. Selecting the custom overwrite option.
   
   After you have your pattern created, you can select to perform a custom overwrite when you select to wipe a drive.