How often to format?

[Guest]

I format my HD at least 2 times per month, is that a lot? how long will it survive? (maxtor diamond 39gigs, 7200rpm, ata/100, it says will work 500 thousands hours!)

 

[camieabz]

I format either once a year, or when I have a major problem (very rarely), or when I change some of the hardware.

<b>
"Now drop your weapons or I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby."
</b>

 

[AEboy128]

I only format when i have problems such as lock-ups and stuff like that. I reloaded mine recently. I reload roughly once a year. This load was stable till i installed some software. Then it just kept locking up on me. And i got sick of it and loaded it the way i should have before. I got it dual booting between WinME and Win2k. Win2k is for my e-mail, Instant messinger, and internet and stuff like that and i use win ME for games. Cuz none of my games run in win2k.

Im savin up for a Cobra!! Hehe!!

 

[Spdy_Gonzales]

I don't think you need to reformat unless you are having a problem with the HDD or you want to do a clean install because Windows is not running right.

Why do you reformat 2 times a month? If you are having a problem, maybe someone has a better solution.

I wonder...what is the speed of gravity?

 

[blah]

You can format HD as many times as you wish (I do it 5 times a day sometimes), there are no "restrictions" for the formatting of the drive, as there are no brains on the drive to think: "oh, i am working too much, this guy is pushing me through the format" (it is just a piece of media to write on and read from). This is only another type of writing to the media (it just writes all ones or zeros, I dont know exact. all over the whole drive, so it "becomes clean" as it is all the same, no info no more, that is why it is saying before you format that all the info on the drive will be lost, in other words overwritten)).
Have fun.


Post, we'll do the "search"...

 

[killall]

on a perfectly run system (ie no windows... running linux for example) you never need to format... not when you upgrade not when you do anything... even resets become very rare... on my windows boxes i used to reset every couple of days before getting the perfect setups... now i havent formatted for over a year on either box...

you do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong

 

[ejsmith2]

I totally sympathize with you on the 2 times a month thing. When new drivers come out, I grind on my system too until the damn thing works right. But you should be able to whittle that down to once a month or a possible once every two months. At the most, don't expect anything greater than once every 6 months. If you don't have to completely wipe Nes98/NesME every 6 months, you're not using your computer correctly.
The only real problem with drives is where you are doing the majority of your reading and writing. Reformating is just a sweep of writing, so it's just as 'destructive' as if you had wrote a file to the drive. Most likely, when you start getting errors, it'll be at the very start of your drive where the windows system files are always stored. If you're keeping your hard drive cool, it'll last 5 years at least before you start getting errors.