Reinstalled Windows w/quick format, computer didnt fully format?

[dontcounttoday]

I just replaced a bunch of hardware and did a quick format with the windows 7 installation disc. When I formatted my 750gb HD it seemed to take about 5 seconds to "format" the drive, and it does appear formatted after windows finished installing, but the computer still has drivers as it clearly recognises my graphics card and certain file type associations are still in place. Such as zip files still open with 7-Zip, which I have not yet reinstalled and do not see in the Uninstall Programs section of the controll panel. I do have 2 slave hard drives with that program installed is it possible its recognising 7Zip from those hard drives, or does windows installation not fully wipe the hard drive? I wanted to completely start from scratch but it seems thats not what happened.

If thats the case what is the alternative or better way to fully wipe a hard drive for new installation?

 

[Jonmor68]

Windows 7 has a large database of drivers for all sorts of hardware including graphics card drivers, how else would you be able to see the screen to set up Windows.
It will also search for drivers that are not on the disk.
It also has a zip/unzip utility built in.
Quick format is all that's needed, I for one would not care to wait for a 750 GB drive to be fully formatted.

 

[sminlal]

You don't have to overwrite every block of the file system in order to format it, you just have to write a fresh table of contents, master file table and create a new free space list. For most intents and purposes it's just as effective as overwriting every block, with the exception that you can usually recover old files using special utilities.

You didn't mention reinstalling Windows, but I'm assuming you did this after formatting the drive? And I'm assuming that the drive you formatted was the one with your original installation of Windows on it?