Formatting HDD - always necessary?

[Speed]

The first channel on my UD5 is SATA0, which is Blue and nearest the 24pin ATX power connector at the top. It out of the two at the top it is the one that is highest up from the PCB surface, ie the one that you can get to first.

Also are you using the latest BIOS for the UD5?

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't 100% which was which!

I'm using bios revision F12, the Gigabyte website isn't loading up to show me if there are any other updates at the moment.

 

[nayenshah]

Did a full format on a 2TB Samsung F3 on Monday and it took approx 6 hours, so no idea where this 24 hours is coming from.

I personally think at least on new drives a full format is a good idea, I also do a full surface scan from DOS before that. At the end of the day, although it takes a while, if you are not in any rush you might as well. After that quick formats are fine.

Hard Disk Sentinel is a good bit of software to run in the background, I use it on my storage server and it has twice warned me of failing drives before they went.

+1 waiting a few hours will save you the stress later on.