Full format / Quick format difference?

Guv

Guv

Guv

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What's the main difference between doing a full format and quick format? I've just got a new drive and did a quick format. It has some files on now but is this a problem or should I format again doing a full format?


Thanks
 
Thanks helmutcheese, good to know!

Does the same apply if the drive is only for file storage and never going to be used as a boot drive?
 
Guv said:
Thanks helmutcheese, good to know!

Does the same apply if the drive is only for file storage and never going to be used as a boot drive?
Click to expand...

No clue it was the Windows HDD, it was a Full Zero wiped HDD basically same as (New/RAW) that I did a yearly format on for a customer (I had built the PC so all parts were new before but her kids mess it up lots).

1 day it simply would not boot as files were missing.

You could go for years and many installs and never get that issue but I wont risk it ever again.

At a guess since no DATA actually was missing apart from the 3 needed Windows Files, I would say its fine for a DATA HDD.
 
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Vista (annoyingly) only offers me the option of a quick format when installing, whatever state the drive is in. I think this might have something to do with my RAID controller.
 
If you mean during Install from booting to Vista DVD that's normal and what we all get and its a PIA.

I am unaware if above issue can arise in Vista anyhow.
 
That's good to know, that just leaves another dozen or so issues for them to fix.

I want my bloody wifi back SP1.
 
We used a 700G Lacie Raid 5 for storing vital data in work ( usb interface )
I used ye olde quick format to save time and wished I hadnt , about 5 months after
formated it , things started to go wrong on the drive.

I ended up having to move what data I could recover off it and doing a proper format instead.

:-(
 
I didnt know the difference between quick and full but has always done full format.
But a friend explained, he deals with a fair amount of computers a day, explained that he got the failure explained by helmutcheese and after a while caused the systems to bugger up and you should always do full format.
In which i do and never reccomend quick format.
 
Full format for a new drive or one that has been zeroed, or an old drive you want to make sure has its bad sectors accounted for.

Quick format for drive that has been full formatted once upon a time.

I only full format on a new or unknown drive basically.
 
Thanks for the info for the last couple of years i've only been doing quick foirmat when i reinstalled windows.
Lucky i've had a lot of new harddrives so it has not caused me a lot of problems.
Reinstalled the other day and after reading this
full format:) thanks
 
The only difference between a Quick and a Full format is that during the Full format, the drive scans for and reallocates bad sectors.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302686

Now then, any modern hard drive does this automatically through the SMART process and this shows up in the Reallocated Sector Count (RSC) of the SMART data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology


With this SMART in mind, if you are starting from scratch with a fresh install, your drive will try to write to a bad sector, find it doesn't work and write it elsewhere and increase the RSC by 1. If this goes over a warning threshold, then Windows may try to warn you. The difficult bit is that this warning is rarely consistent.

The bottom line is that there is little reason to do a full format these days for new installs, unless you have reason to believe the drive has a problem. In which case, why are you installing windows on it and not scanning it more thoroughly? :)

In fact, a good thorough drive scan tool that reports SMART data like Spinrite should be all you ever need if you suspect a drive to be faulty.

Slightly less than 50% of hard drive failures can be picked up with the SMART data, but some times Windows does not pick up on such faults and tell you about them in time :(

What is apparent though is that in a commerical environment, 70% of drives with scan errors fail completely within the next 8 months! These drives are in temperature controlled data centres and run 24/7, but the data from Google is difficult to ignore. If you have a drive that is developing errors or "losing" files all of a sudden, it is best to get everything needed of of it ASAP!

More here:
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
 
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