"Cleaning" a hard drive

There's this process I've been using for some years now called Zeroing. It's part of Linux and uses a command similar to this
I use it to write zeroes to every byte on a hard drive as a means of security as well as to clean it up. Now, I have done enough research to believe that zeroing a hard drive is a pretty secure method of securely deleting data (I am welcome to possible alternatives). However, I was wondering about the other part of the process: cleaning the hard drive. I've had a computer crash on me and I'll loose the MBR on a hard drive. Fortunately, most of the time, I can use Active @ File Recovery and recover most of the files. However, when I got to format, or zero, the hard drive, I've wondered if the residual data left on the hard drive from deleted files or lost partitions has long lasting effects. In other words, should I go to the trouble of "cleaning" a hard drive of all it's residual data or does a simple reformat do just as well?