Pc question

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]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

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...

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

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??

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

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

That's a lot of porn

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!!