If you flash custom ROMs to your Android device often, you might be getting tired of having to manually wipe data, cache, dalvik cache and in certain cases, system partitions each time. Worse still, at times wiping them once doesn't quite do the job for some weird reason and you have to do it multiple times to make sure it goes all smooth. What if you could instead just flash a tiny zip file before flashing the ROM itself, that would wipe all these partitions securely and automatically for you? XDA recognized developer thederekjay has released a tool called DARKSIDE.SUPER.WIPE that does the above automatically, safely and securely for you.

Please note that it is originally written for and tested with the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-T989. It may however work with several other devices, provided they have the same partition structure. The script contained in the flashable zip file can be easily modified for those devices that use a different partition structure. The tool's forum thread has more information on how to find if the partition structure of your device is the same.

Using the tool is simple - just flash it from recovery just like you would flash any other zip file, and then flash the ROM of your choice. It will format /system, /data and /cache with EXT4 file system, erasing everything on these partitions.

Please note that if you want to keep your existing data while upgrading to a newer version of the same ROM, do NOT use this tool. Use it only when you are OK with a complete data wipe, to start from scratch, or if you have already backed up your data for manual restoration later.