Arch Linux

playdafunkimuzic

Member

Registered: 2008-10-25

Posts: 220

Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

Hi,

I have a dual boot of windows and arch. I've had this setup for quite some time now, over a year. I had used openbox and my friend told me to install kde to try it out and I guess I installed a lot of things I no longer want on the install. Also, I poorly distributed the size of the different partitions.

To keep it short: I want to start from scratch. Is formatting the harddrive a bad thing, as in, will it cut the life of the drive shorter with each format? Or is that really not true anymore with "modern" harddrives?

Last edited by playdafunkimuzic (2009-06-24 15:17:42)

kensai

Member

From: Puerto Rico

Registered: 2005-06-03

Posts: 2,484

Website

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

Well, I have been formatting my desktop harddrive constantly since 2004 and still the hdd is working flawlessly. Man, I think I have formatted way over a 100 times.

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Vladman

Member

Registered: 2009-01-28

Posts: 118

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

Formated many drives many times and never had any problems.

lifeafter2am

Member

From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2009-06-10

Posts: 1,332

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

Yeah, I can't count the number of times my server hdd has been reformatted (obviously not a production server ), no problems here.

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lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

High-level formatting simply creates some basic filesystem structures. Nothing to wear your disk out.

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

High-level formatting simply creates some basic filesystem structures. Nothing to wear your disk out.

Yes, it's equivalent to writing some data onto the disk. Copying e.g. a video file around "uses" the disk more than formatting it.

TjPhysicist

Member

From: Waterloo, Canada

Registered: 2008-04-12

Posts: 126

Website

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

I think a "full format" might lessen the life of ur HD if you do it many times. by full format i mean cat /dev/null>/dev/sda (please do not attempt this). OR rather some partition software offer this as a "full format" meaning every bit in there is flipped to 0.  But the only reason you wud ever want to do that is to wipe out sensetive data from an entire partition

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R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

Full format, quick format it's all the same, it wears the drive as much as writing files. I would almost say that even a low level format doesn't wear the drive any more than normal usage, all it does is write zeros to the whole drive, from the HD point of view it's all data that needs to be written. Bits change state every time you write something to the drive, a format is just writing something to the drive.

The only difference may be the time the drive takes to do a full / low level format, if the drive does not have proper cooling it may build up more heat than with "normal" usage. With "normal" usage the drive is idling part of the time so it generates less heat but apart from that it's all the same.

Mind you that this applies to rotating platers disks not the newer Solid State Drives.

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will1911a1

Member

Registered: 2008-04-20

Posts: 59

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

I've formatted many drives over the years and never had a problem.

Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,963

Website

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

I lost my parents and the use of my legs in a hard drive formatting accident.

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broch

Banned

From: L.A. California

Registered: 2006-11-13

Posts: 975

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

quick format = delete files
full format = scans for bad sectors and lay file structure

simple test to see a difference between quick format and full format:
try to do quick format on unformatted disk (nowadays difficult go get)

low level formating requires mnufacturer's formatting tool or something like Maxblast or Powermax from Maxtor

`dannyb

Member

From: /dev/null & aka Minnesota

Registered: 2009-01-27

Posts: 34

Re: Is formatting a harddrive "bad"?

Well, I have been formatting my desktop harddrive constantly since 2004 and still the hdd is working flawlessly. Man, I think I have formatted way over a 100 times.

I hear you, my poor 74GB Raptor has been at least formatted 100 times thanks to my distro hopping hehe. Luckily for it I have settled on one distro