Formatting a hard drive will NOT ruin it, and I don't think partitioning it too many times will, either, because if you think about it, you are formatting the drive to reinstall/install an OS or make room for swap, I hope you are not formatting to delete info, because it is NOT gone. If, however, your drive thrashes around a lot even when the computer is untouched, it's going to deduct some life off of the drive. And so will waiting ten years before running defrag for the first time is not going to be appreciated by your hard drive - it'll take hours - I've heard a day and several hours into the next day in one case - to defrag a system that hasn't been defragmented for months or years (Remember, the read/write heads must move to do its work, and when defrag is in action, those arms fly back and forth helplessly - so doing that for several hours is not good) Other killers are heat, bumping/kicking/shaking, contamination (a small particle of dust can be like a big boulder under the read/write head) and power issues (surges and brownouts) - NEVER EVER EVER remove any sticker on a hard drive- even the nameplate sticker - behind those "stickers" reveal small holes and you can see the HDA if you look. Most of those "stickers" are expensive air filters that let a very tiny amount of air in for ventilation and so that way the heads can be pushed up when the disk spins.