Is it normal for a format to take 5 seconds?

[Jhill]

I just installed a new 80 gig maxtor HD. I used the maxblast software to format the harddrive in NTFS. I swear it took about 5 seconds to format it. Then after i booted up I went to it under my computer and right clicked on it and hit "quick format". (it's not my main drive) and it took about 5 seconds there also. I thought it took a lot longer than that. Is it because it's a new HD without any information?


Thanks for any help.

 

[tbates757]

yah that is normal, quick format within windows doesnt take any time at all

 

[John]

No, formatting (standard format) an 80GB drive should take 5+ min.

 

[Sunner]

A quick format will be very quick, while a fill format(which will fo a check of the physical HD sectors) will take quite some time.

Dont know how Maxblast works though.

 

[PCMarine]

What is better? A Full or Quick Format?

I have always done full format because I'm paranoid, but is there really a difference?

 

[dowxp]

Originally posted by: PCMarine
What is better? A Full or Quick Format? I have always done full format because I'm paranoid, but is there really a difference?

if you are scared someone is going to break into your house and steal your harddrive and then steal your data, perhaps a full format. otherwise, why waste time? =P

 

[stevewm]

A quick format simply writes out the file system structure. This only takes seconds to do...

A full format writes the file system structures the same way a quick format does, it then reads every sector in the partition one by one to verify they are all in working order, if it finds any it cannot read from successfully then it marks that sector as bad and the filesystem will avoid it. Basically a full format is a format and a scandisk combined.

 

[Lord Evermore]

NTFS (and I think FAT32) can be quick formatted even on a blank drive. MaxBlast probably defaults to a quick format, since the full format's only use is that it scans for bad sectors, which shouldn't be an issue with a new drive.

 

[Jhhnn]

Stevewm has it right- there's no need to do more than a quick format on a new drive to be sure to clear the file info. For suspect drives or any drive that's been infected with virii, I'll write the whole thing to zeroes, use the maker's utility to test the drive. The Maxtor model, Powermax.exe, is very good in that it can be set to run repeatedly. I recently used it to diagnose buggy electronics on a drive that would test good on a single pass test...

In the past, I've written used drives to zeroes before selling them, but I'll probably be using DBAN in the future- pretty surprising what nosy folks can learn from a used drive...