Does it take FOREVER to format a 120 gig HD?

T

Tiny

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 31, 2003
Messages
6,346
No.

I formatted mine and it ended well before Forever.
 
With a new 7200.7 120gig SATA drive, it took about 30 minutes to do a format from within windows, complete NTFS format. So, sort of long, but not really.
 
I've noticed a lot of variation in format time. It takes a lot longer to format a 100GB partition of my 250GB WD than it took to format the whole thing as one partition.
 
With a new 7200.7 120gig SATA drive, it took about 30 minutes to do a format from within windows, complete NTFS format. So, sort of long, but not really.
Click to expand...

If you are doing a fresh install for XP, the disk configuration part of the install will allow you to do a FAT32 or NTFS quick format which will help out the time dramatically (maybe 20-30 seconds).

BTW - when you do a thorough scandisk (as part of your regularly scheduled maintenance), it will catch anything that may have been missed by doing a quick format (vs. full format).

Good luck!
J
 
Originally posted by -=FNW=-j@br0n1
If you are doing a fresh install for XP, the disk configuration part of the install will allow you to do a FAT32 or NTFS quick format which will help out the time dramatically (maybe 20-30 seconds).
Click to expand...
Quick formats make baby Jesus cry.
 
Full format scans the sectors for defects, Quick Format just erases the record in the MBR so the disk appears to have no data. It just basically erases the "Table of Contents" of a book and leaves the rest of the cotents. Much like when you delete a file, it isn't actually erased from the HD. Instead, it just removes the entry from the TOC. When you try to access a file, the HD goes to the TOC to find out where the file is. If the entry in the TOC is not there, then no such file exists on the HD (at least thats what the HD thinks).
 
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