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Hey, got a simple format question, need answer fast :)

Q

quiksilverx181

2[H]4U
Joined
Nov 21, 2003
Messages
2,309
Ok, i just formatted my 120gb hard drive, and i told no body to touch my newly installed windows with any form of internet till i came home from work so that i could install antivirus/firewalls (so i get no popups). Well, my genius mom decides to not listen to me and fubared my windows install. Popups up the butt, 2-3 viruses already and computer resources at 80% load.

Will formatting my HD again (after 1 day) screw up my HD? Will my new format of windows run just as flawlessly as this install had (before internet came on it?).

Im just paranoid because my last few formats, each format has been wierd, one is good, the next is not, etc.

Thanks
 
Nope, won't hurt it at all, i've done multiple formats on drives in a single day messing around with raid settins and what not because I was bored.
 
From a mechanical standpoint, I wouldn't worry too much about it. The makers use some ridiculously powerful magnets for making the embedded servo tracks on the platters, and no amount of formatting is going to damage them, as the magnet in the drive is simply not powerful enough to affect them. Formatting is also a highly linear procedure, so it doesn't represent an unusual mechanical strain on the actuator mechanism for the read/write heads. Neither of these factors were true, or at least not as true, in the past. Any half way recent drive (say from this millenium :p) is not going to have any practical limitations on how many times it can be formatted. The drive is much more likely to fail from simple age before you hit any such formatting limitation.
 
besides which all reformating does is rewrite the metadata
leaving the rest of the data in place but unreadable (without a direct sector scan \ recovery ap)
youd write more real data with a smallish video download

there is a class of malware that will survive a reformat
Multipartite Viruses or Boot Viruses which write to the MBR
(Master Boot Record) and survive a reinstall and reformat

youd either zero the HDD or employ a specialized tool to get rid of them, they are however very old school and fairly rare these days
 
I would Write zeros to your hard drive, then Full Format NTFS whatever. You will be good to go.
 
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