which is better quick format or full format

While re-installing XP which format should i opt for quick format or full format.

[kalpik]

Quick format, its lighter on the disk. Full format only when you are messing with partitions etc..

but will full format make my hard disk faster

QUICK for genral purpose

[alib_i]

Why would full format make your harddisk faster.
There is nothing like that.

On the contrary, there is a read-write life of all harddisks.
Full format means you reduce that life, although by very small amount.
So, if it can, it can reduce your disk life, doesnt neccessarily increase your speed.
Avoid full formats as much as possible.

As long as the new data recorded is defragmented, your harddisk is fast.

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alibi

[krish]

For accessing files, the HDD keeps tracks of all the files through an index. By quick format, only this index is erased. But in full format, each & evry sector of ur HDD is erased. That's why Full format takes more time. So it depends on ur needs.

The data which is left after erasing the index does not have any reference so it is erased as and when HD requires space. The data with reference is not erased.

[club_pranay]

go for full formats only if you have some problem like bad sectors. and when in a practice, sometimes prevents accidental loss of data ( you can recover data after a quick format, but not after a full format!!)

[theraven]

huh ?
how does a full format help recovering bad sectors ?
and you can recover data from full format too
only not using conventional software avaialble to us
then u need to get prof. help

also neither quick format nor full format affect the hard disk in anyway
alib_i are u sure abt fill format ?
cuz even bat agrees neither of these formats affect hdd life

[club_pranay]

i dont know, but i had this moserbaer cd rw, giving all sorts of write errors, just one full format of the media and it was smiling again. and i myself recovered data from a "quick" formatted hdd a month back using "unistall". i dont think it will work with a hdd fully formated

[mohit]

I agree with raven , formatting (quick or full) doesnt affect the hdd's life in any way. its just the crap spread by our gr8 dealers who talk nuthing but nonsense. i always full format my hdd and i do it once every month .. coz i screw up something or the other.

and data can be recovered after a full format also. data is made unrecoverable only by using tools to zero fill the hdd or using hdd killers which completely wipe the data with zero recovery guarantee.

[digen]

Originally Posted by alib_i

Why would full format make your harddisk faster.
There is nothing like that.

On the contrary, there is a read-write life of all harddisks.
Full format means you reduce that life, although by very small amount.
So, if it can, it can reduce your disk life, doesnt neccessarily increase your speed.
Avoid full formats as much as possible.

As long as the new data recorded is defragmented, your harddisk is fast.

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alibi

Forgive me for my lack of knowledge but could you provide a few links from respectable websites or much better would be explain how a full format will reduce the life of a hard disk ?

[sakumar79]

full format will physically remove all the files from your hd whearas quick format only removes the link to all the files... Since writing by itself reduces hd life (even though not by any significant amount), full format will reduce the hd life just a bit (again, this wont be noticeable compared to the entire life of your hd).

BTW, i think that if you have bad sectors that are not marked, full format will mark it, in which case club_pranay would be right. But I am not completely sure of this...

Arun

[theraven]

@pranay yes u can revcover from quick format
but also from FULL format but u need professional services for that

as for the cd's ... i dunno dude. .. a format cannot repair bad sectors !

[alib_i]

@ digen and raven
Your comments made me go for google again.
I checked in on forums to see if what I wrote there is right or not.

Well, from the way I understood it, full formatting will do a 'quick format' and along with that, execute a sequential read verify command. i.e. read that data to check if the command is succesful or not. Regular full formats can therefore be compared to reading the whole drive again and again. I consider that stressful for the drive as compared to quick format.

But from what I just searched, it seems it's not that much of a workload for hardisk as much as I considered. I think I confused low-level formatting ( in which data is read and written both ) with full format when I wrote that ( because that's gotta be stressful for the drive for sure ).

about bad sectors ...
Full format wont 'recover' or 'repair' bad sectors ..
But it can atleast find and 'label' them, because of the 'read verify' check.
Which means that, full format is a must when reinstalling/formatting due to presence of bad sectors.

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alibi

[theraven]

yeah exactly
low level format
since reading and writing is done too
since full hdd is written with 0's

Thanks for the research and the diff. between full anf quick format