Pc question

[stewie]

I was wondering if any of you computer experts could settle an arguement for me ? my shift partner is forever formatting his system, vista 64 bit, he basically downloads everything to his extrernal hd, formats his pc and reloads it all over, I was always under the impression constant formatting could do the hd harm and he is doing this at least once a week, so can constant formatting be a bad thing ?
Thanks
Stew

[Dave20046]

Never heard it before but I'm more fo a monkey than an expert. I don't know what the mechanical strains of a format are on the harddrive but I never imagined it to be more hardcore than a normal read/write.

[Shellywoozle]

I have no idea why is he doing that though? Does he need to reformat on a weekly basis or has he just lost his marbles?

[SoulKiss]

I was wondering if any of you computer experts could settle an arguement for me ? my shift partner is forever formatting his system, vista 64 bit, he basically downloads everything to his extrernal hd, formats his pc and reloads it all over, I was always under the impression constant formatting could do the hd harm and he is doing this at least once a week, so can constant formatting be a bad thing ?
Thanks
Stew

No harm, no foul - if he is doing a quick format he is just re-writing the File Allocation Table - data is still there, just not indexed.

No idea why he's doing it tho - be better and quicker just to do a System Restore.

Sounds like a way of wasting an hour or two a week...

BTW I have the HD in my PC running 24x7 downloading stuff, so constant running isnt an issue.

[Dave20046]

BTW I have the HD in my PC running 24x7 downloading stuff, so constant running isnt an issue.
Indeed, unless you get a duff one normal life expectancy is about a million hours online I believe...

[stewie]

Dunno why he feels the need, but he always seem to have an issue or two and instead of fixing it he just starts all over again, I remember reading somewhere that constant formatting could lead to cottuption of files and stuff being left on the hd and then corrupting further files.

[SoulKiss]

Dunno why he feels the need, but he always seem to have an issue or two and instead of fixing it he just starts all over again, I remember reading somewhere that constant formatting could lead to cottuption of files and stuff being left on the hd and then corrupting further files.

Only if you were to run file-recovery tools.

Advise him to try System Recovery - if he goes to the restore point that is generated at the install it should put him back to how it was at that point - but without data loss.

Will save him days over the course of a year.

[Shellywoozle]

Only if you were to run file-recovery tools.

Advise him to try System Recovery - if he goes to the restore point that is generated at the install it should put him back to how it was at that point - but without data loss.

Will save him days over the course of a year.

LOL but tell him to make sure system restore is on ... can you not turn those things off, tick box somewhere??

[lukemillar]

BTW I have the HD in my PC running 24x7 downloading stuff, so constant running isnt an issue.

That's a lot of porn :wink:

[Jackie_Black]

I reformat mine every 6 - 12 months as windows gets full of crap and slows down. However it takes me about 24 hours to reinstall everything and get the system spot on so I put it off as long as possible normally. Me drives are all in raid 0 and I never really have a problem with reliability. He must have nowt else to do though if he's installing it every week!!

[SoulKiss]

That's a lot of porn :wink:

Not that much - I only have an internal Terrabyte drive on that machine...

There are 3 other Terrabyte drives hooked up via USB however :)

and its not ALL porn...

[Dave20046]

Why doesn't he just get his machine how he likes it and take an image of it then when ever he meddles and feels the need to reformat it he can just revert to the image he's taken complete with drivers,software and data.

[hindle8907]

Deleted data is never really totaly deleted It is marked by windows as 'usable drive space' and gets overwritten by new data. (which is still recoverable)Formatting does not get rid of all the data on the disk doing this weekly your drive may start to become slower unless you use a program such as blancco which overwirtes everything with 0's
and it removes all data from the drive.

[hindle8907]

Why doesn't he just get his machine how he likes it and take an image of it then when ever he meddles and feels the need to reformat it he can just revert to the image he's taken complete with drivers,software and data.

verry true this would save him lots of time lol .

[SoulKiss]

Deleted data is never really totaly deleted It is marked by windows as 'usable drive space' and gets overwritten by new data. (which is still recoverable)Formatting does not get rid of all the data on the disk doing this weekly your drive may start to become slower unless you use a program such as BLANKO which overwirtes everything with 0's
and it removes all data from the drive.

Rubbish - it will not slow the drive down.

[hindle8907]

Rubbish - it will not slow the drive down.

i said doing this weekly it MAY start to slow the drive down.

[stewie]

Thanks for the advice guys, now you know why I drive a truck for a living ;) good job I didnt have any money on it :D

[the_lone_wolf]

i said doing this weekly it MAY start to slow the drive down.

In the same way that it may give your computer the power of self sustained flight?;)

[SoulKiss]

i said doing this weekly it MAY start to slow the drive down.

And I said it WILL NOT IN ANY WAY slow it down - see you are still wrong.

[Paul the 6th]

you're all wrong, the guy sounds like a time wasting perv.