- quick vs thorough format?
- Posted by Todd and Margo Chester on April 29th, 2006
Hi,
When installing in XP on a bare hard drive, the XP
install will ask if you want to do a quick or a thorough
format of the hard drive. Questions:
1) other than the speed, what is the difference between
these two formats?
2) again, other than the speed, why would you choose one
over the other?
-Todd
- Posted by R. McCarty on April 29th, 2006
Quick simply creates the structures, Full creates the structures and
performs integrity tests on the drive, such as bad block testing.
With today's modern drives that employ SMART, I would only do
a full format on a "Suspect" drive that has exhibited problems during
prior use.
"Todd and Margo Chester" <ToddMargoChester@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:e30t1a$nm1$1@emma.aioe.org...
- Posted by Malke on April 29th, 2006
Todd and Margo Chester wrote:
The full format checks the hard drive for bad sectors; the quick format
doesn't. I don't bother doing a full format on a brand new hard drive
but I do the full format on hard drives that have been around for a
while. This is not to say that a drive can't fail out of the box; they
do and I've had them do that, but it isn't the norm.
Malke
--
MS-MVP Windows User/Shell
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic"
- Posted by MAP on April 29th, 2006
Todd and Margo Chester wrote:
The quick format does not scan your HD for bad sectors (areas) where as the
through format does, if any bad sectors are found on your HD the operating
system discards that area and marks it not to be used.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=302686
--
Mike Pawlak
- Posted by Jonny on April 30th, 2006
"MAP" <mikepawlak2REM@OVEhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23zn6ge%23aGHA.488@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
Think its important to point out that bad area remaps only works for the
partitioned area, not the entire hard drive. It doesn't touch the partition
table itself, or the master boot record area.
Misleading is the statement that files are removed. The file allocation
table is remade instead. The files are still there until written over in
some fashion.
--
Jonny
- Posted by MAP on April 30th, 2006
Jonny wrote:
Where did this come from?
--
Mike Pawlak
- Posted by Plato on May 3rd, 2006
Todd and Margo Chester wrote:
Quick just erases the FAT. Thorough checks for bad areas on drive.
--
http://www.bootdisk.com/
