Format/Reformat?

bumblebee_tuna

bumblebee_tuna

New Member
In essence, what happens when you format/reformat a hard-drive because I heard that it miniculely deterioriates you hard drive each time you do it?
 
  1. The formatting program removes the references to your old files. This makes the files inaccessible to most programs because the programs won't know where the files are located on the hard drive.
  2. Your hard drive is divided into new storage sections called sectors.
  3. A new file called a file allocation table is created. This file will be used to store the locations of data on the hard drive.
After formatting, most programs will treat your drive as if it were empty. And no it does not hurt the Harddrive unless you do it 5 times a day and wear the drive out!
 
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It all depends on the kind of format you to. A high-level (Quick) format will just delete the "index" of where the files are on your system. This makes it so the space where the files are can be written over. If you have some advanced tools, you can still recover the files that are on the disk without much trouble.

A low-level format will actually go through and write "0" bits across your entire drive. This still does not make the data unrecoverable, but it does make it a little more difficult.

Now since all you're doing is wiping information off the drive and putting new information back on again, you will not damage the drive in any way by reformatting. This is what it was designed to do.
 
lol Thanks! Before, I was kind of given the impression that reformatting was a small layer of the actual disk was 'buff' off so you start out with a clean drive.......
 
No, that's actually what happens with Rewritable CDs/DVDs. These do wear out after you've written to them, then erased, then rewritten. In HDs (when working correctly), the read/write heads do not touch the surface, or in any other way damage the drive :)
 
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