Folks, I'm about to put together a new PC for a friend. The question I have is is there any major or minor qualitative differences between formating the hard-drive under fast or standard speeds. Also, it's a 160 gig drive. I'm wondering how many, if any, partions I should create? Just looking for recommendations. thanks, Tom
well the quick format doesn't actually remove any data, it just removes the ability to access the data, a full format actually removes the data
Okay, didn't realize the latter actually removed data. This is a brand new drive and I was wondering if there are any significant pros/cons to quick vs slow format application.
oh, right, well you have to initialize and then full format a new drive, you can't quick format a new drive[ot]try it, it won't do it[/ot]quick format is intended to format quickly (it actually just hides the data and allows the existing data to overwritten) if you want data to be gone from an existing drive always do a full format, with a quick format the data is relatively easy to restore[ot]as opposed to restoring data after a full format[ot]there are no pros/cons, if you want data to be gone from an existing drive always do a full format[/ot]
Interesting that you would say you can't do a quick format on a new drive. Not to be argumentative, but I've been reading "Build Your Own PC" 2004 by Morris Rosenthal and he says you CAN do a quick format, but doesn't mention any pros/cons. From what your saying though it sounds like if I CAN do a quick format on the initial go around then there really are no cons as relate to full format
You can't perform a quick format if the disk doesn't have a partition table yet. If the disk is brand new and doesn't contain any data, you will have to perform a full format.
well try it, it will say it can't not a problem, at least your keeping me on my toes you can NOT quick format a new drive, please try it & report back BTW: just looked at MS's site & i cant find anything relating to format vs quick format Edit: :beer: thankies mega, a most stuff i know, i just know, i don't know the hows or whys[ot]but i'm trying[/ot]
Interesting stuff... Eh, why risk it, I may as well go with full format (and find something else to do for 4-5 hours ) How about partitioning? I remember something about large drives being a bit cumbersome for Windows to work with and that smaller logical partitions are better. Any thoughts?
Well, in fact if your hard drive is new, you'll have to set up partitions. Actually you can't format a drive, but you format a partition (or several partitions). You could see a hard drive as an empty space. Partitioning a hard drive is making boxes within that drive. You could also format with Acronis Disk Director (the boot media). That takes about a few seconds. And yeah, I would suggest to create smaller partitions. Create 2 partitions of 80 GB.
yeah, disk partitioning is actually a v v good idea, as you can format your Win partition leaving all other partitions with their existing data on them[ot]as Win needs a format and a clean reinstall fairly regularly[/ot]and then you just need to remount your other partitions where they were, i recommend creating 1 primary bootable and 1 extended partition with as many logical drives as you like, i would probably create a 5Gb primary (for Win) and that will leave about 145 Gb (after loosing some space after formating, the missing space is taken up by formating & some error checking stuff)
well, all that aside, i also don't remember where i got this from, but a full format is a good idea if your doing a first time formant on a new HDD.
A full format checks the disk for errors and marks bad spots so the file system knows where they are and not to use them.
