Is formatting TOO often bad?

[Andvari]

I've heard that formatting can increase the life of your HD, but what if you format too often? I am probably about to format for the 5th time in the past 3 months or so. I've gotten so proficient at it, I would rather format when I find an unsolvable problem than take the time to search for a solution.

So is it bad or does is not effect it either way?

 

[Xdreamer]

as far as i know there is no danger to your HD
they are designed to take that sort of beating you know

 

[Nocturnal]

Nope.

 

[n0cmonkey]

The only problem I think it would really cause is for everyone to laugh at you for being such a newbie.

 

[Corporate Thug]

i dont think it matters

 

[farmercal]

I don't understand the reason for constant reformats these days. Whenever I encounter a problem that bad I can always restore a few days back and everything is fine again. I don't have the time to reinstall everything over and over again. It actually saves me time to fix the problem in the first place.

 

[Thor86]

Yeah, it's a waste of your time re-installing everything. You should use a nice partition/drive backup software like Ghost to save you these hassles. I don't think I have formatted since WinXP was released.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: farmercal
I don't understand the reason for constant reformats these days. Whenever I encounter a problem that bad I can always restore a few days back and everything is fine again. I don't have the time to reinstall everything over and over again. It actually saves me time to fix the problem in the first place.

I somewhat agree... I am usually formatting only once a year at the most in the last few years.

my last Win2K install which I just got rid of a month or 2 ago, had been since later 2002.. at least a year and a half without format and no real problems, I just wanted a new OS, that's the only reason I even formatted. It had been through 3 motherboards too, and still not 1 glitch.

 

[Matthias99]

Why on Earth would formatting *increase* the life of a HD?

If you're formatting your system FIVE TIMES in three months, maybe you should learn to fix problems... very few problems are 'unsolvable'.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Why on Earth would formatting *increase* the life of a HD?

only reason I can think of might be because if the drive is fragmented badly it has to read more often and for longer than normal.

other than that, can't see how it's possible.

 

[madthumbs]

Someone may have been referring to "low-level formatting" which could extend the life of the hard drive, but should be done with extreme caution.

 

[T9D]

Originally posted by: madthumbs
Someone may have been referring to "low-level formatting" which could extend the life of the hard drive, but should be done with extreme caution.

Why should it be done with caution? That's the only way I do it. Ensures everything gets wiped clean and no virus's stay alive. I only format like once a year or so though.

 

[constable]

In the extreme case, formatting will cause you to lose a small amount of your hard drive space. For example, I usually lose about 10-100 megs every time I format. So its not really a good idea to format often.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: constable
In the extreme case, formatting will cause you to lose a small amount of your hard drive space. For example, I usually lose about 10-100 megs every time I format. So its not really a good idea to format often.

wtf are you talking about? Why would formatting cause you to lose hard drive space?

 

[Andvari]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
The only problem I think it would really cause is for everyone to laugh at you for being such a newbie.

I'm not a newbie (well maybe I am). I'm just impatient. Nobody else in the Software forum could help me with my problem apparently, so they must be newbies too.

Either that, or again with my impatience, I didn't give them enough time to respond heh.

Either way, if I can reformat and reinstall faster than I can find the solution to a problem, wouldn't that be the logical thing to do?


EDIT: And I usually DO only reformat about once a year. I've just been trigger happy recently. I'll tone it back down heh. Also, the first thing I do after a fresh XP install is to disable System Restore. Maybe that's a silly idea.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: constable
In the extreme case, formatting will cause you to lose a small amount of your hard drive space. For example, I usually lose about 10-100 megs every time I format. So its not really a good idea to format often.

wtf are you talking about? Why would formatting cause you to lose hard drive space?

A low-level format usually scans for bad sectors and marks them as unusable, which would decrease the amount of space you have available on your drive. But if you're losing 10-100MB(!) to this, your drive's dying. Quickly.

Also, low-level formatting is a waste of time if all you're going to do is reinstall Windows. Unless you managed to get a boot-sector virus on there... but I'm pretty sure that a full reinstallation from CD would fix that as well (since it rewrites the MBR).

 

[GrumpyMan]

Constant formatting = you don't know how to maintain a computer and should find another hobby.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: constable
In the extreme case, formatting will cause you to lose a small amount of your hard drive space. For example, I usually lose about 10-100 megs every time I format. So its not really a good idea to format often.

wtf are you talking about? Why would formatting cause you to lose hard drive space?

A low-level format usually scans for bad sectors and marks them as unusable, which would decrease the amount of space you have available on your drive. But if you're losing 10-100MB(!) to this, your drive's dying. Quickly.

Also, low-level formatting is a waste of time if all you're going to do is reinstall Windows. Unless you managed to get a boot-sector virus on there... but I'm pretty sure that a full reinstallation from CD would fix that as well (since it rewrites the MBR).

Well, that's true. If the sectors are marked as bad then you would lose free space. But 10+ MB! :Q

 

[Andvari]

Originally posted by: GrumpyMan
Constant formatting = you don't know how to maintain a computer and should find another hobby.

I'm a software engineer (well, that's my major).

I love computers, even with my peepee!!1

 

[araczynski]

formatting is no different then writing data to the drive, which you do thousands of times a day.

i can understand the impatience thing though. for me to reformat however there has to be a serious 'not booting' problem that i can't resolve through regular repair methods.

i do love starting with a fresh slate though, no matter how you treat your system, it's never as fast/responsive as during those first few days/weeks/months.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: GrumpyMan
Constant formatting = you don't know how to maintain a computer and should find another hobby.

Exactly! It's really sad, that due to the poor design quality of Microsoft OSes in general, that this idea of somehow needing to re-format often has become this sort of "urban legend". There is no need for a properly maintained OS to need re-formatting/re-installation on a regular basis. The only times that this should be needed, is due to disaster-recovery, or possibly in the case of a major platform (OS) upgrade, because sometimes you never really know what glitches could pop up after an in-place upgrade.

The sad part is, and this is where the poor design of MS OSes comes into play, is because of how complex it is, because of many years' worth of legacy compatibility and feature-itis build-up, and how "hand-off" things like software installation and removal are. So if some unwanted software gets installed (due to security flaws), it becomes nearly impossible for an ordinary user to remove it, because it doesn't come with a single pretty icon to double-click to remove it. (And thus the growing proliferation of 3rd-party tools to remove things like spyware, old device-drivers, and what-have-you.) Sure, MS creates entire software industries because of the design flaws and weaknesses in their software, but it doesn't have to be that way, and IMHO, it would save a lot of time and expense on each individual user's part, if MS just fixed the issues up-front in the first place, even if it would mean effective genocide for those 3rd-party tools. (The laws of supply and demand have no regrets.)

My point is thus, "it doesn't have to be this way". I just wish that MS might actually think of the users for once, instead of their lock-in and profit margins. I give MS another 5 years, 10 tops, to be on top. If you follow these sorts of things, their curve has reached its apex, and will soon be in decline.

PS. To answer the OP's question, formatting or zero-wiping an IDE HD, doesn't cause it any more wear-and-tear than ordinary usage. In fact, due to magnetic fade/drift and minor microscopic mechanical wear, it can often help maintain the readability of your data if you "refresh" it once in a while. However, that is different than reformatting, and moving the data around due to say, a defragmentation process, is just as effective at re-writing the user data sectors.

 

[viivo]

It's fairly subjective, but I don't see where the frequency of format = PC literacy correlation comes from. I'm just a lazy bastard who finds a reformat every 4 months to be easier than finding all those loose registry entries and useless DLLs cluttering up system folders. If you have a backup CD or DVD with all your settings and programs it can be faster than defragging.

 

[Andvari]

^ Exactly. I'm perfectly computer literate. Sadly, I'm the guy all my friends come to when they have a computer problem. :

And that is exactly what I have. Thanks to my DVD burner, reformatting is actually remotely enjoyable. Heh.

 

[kendogg]

Honestly after running xp for a period of time you tend to compile junk to your system and your computer feels sluggish. It always feels nice to start off on a clean slate.

 

[Splork]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
The only problem I think it would really cause is for everyone to laugh at you for being such a newbie.

Agreed.

-sp