Are you talking about erasing all data or free space?
Either way, unless you're talking about time to tie up your computer erasing one 10 GB, as opposed to amt of time for 160 GB, erasing six 10GB partitions doesn't seem like it'd be faster (overall) than erasing one 160 GB partition. It might wind up taking more total time to erase 6 partitions than one big one.
Depending on what you're erasing, you can use fewer passes than 35, unless you don't want the FBI or equivalent to be able to recover it.
Anytime you split partitions w/ data on them, into smaller partitions (actually moving the data), you run a risk of corruption, even using the best prgms. That should be a consideration, unless you're talking about erasing all data on the drive(s). In which case, read 2nd paragraph above.
